


if I can live through this (I can do anything)

by actualbluesargent



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - All For The Game Fusion, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Sports, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:58:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualbluesargent/pseuds/actualbluesargent
Summary: When Coach Marcus Kane offers Clarke a chance to play for one of the top-ranked college Exy teams, there's no chance in hell she's going to say no. Even if it's the last thing she should be doing. Even if the team is renowned for being a band of misfits who can barely get through a game without throwing punches.Even if their team captain, Bellamy Blake, decides immediately that he doesn't like her.





	1. the last of a dying breed

**Author's Note:**

> if you haven't read the all for the game trilogy by Nora Sakavic:  
> "Exy is a sport played on a soccer-sized court that has walls and ceilings made of plexiglass. It is "an evolved sort of lacrosse [...] with the violence of ice hockey". A team consists of six players, each of which has a racquet with varying depths of netting. To score, the players must shoot the ball at the goal, a rectangle marked on the shorter wall. The goal will light up in red if it has been hit. The objective of the game is to out-score one's opponents." (from the foxhole court wiki)
> 
> none of the characters from the original trilogy feature in this, I just stole their sport and their team.

Clarke Griffin falls to her knees, panting, sweat dripping down her brow as the final bell for the final game of her Exy season rings out. She can hear, vaguely, her teammates offering congratulations to the other team, but it all feels so far away, and her world zeroes down to the scoreboard, 14-12, her team’s disadvantage, in bright red LEDs.

There is, Clarke has learned, nowhere in the world that makes her feel as alive as an Exy court. It’s like the rest of the time, she’s moving through water, and only on the court can she release everything within her. Between the plexiglass walls her racket is an extension of her, and her only worth that needs to be counted is how well she can play. 

Unfortunately, playing for a Class II college team, not a great one at that, the opportunities afforded to her to play Exy seemed to get fewer and fewer the further as the year, and the season, went on. Now that her team lost the quarter finals, they were out of the game until next season, and the court would be locked up until summer practice started up in June. A part of Clarke ached.

“Get it together, Griffin,” she mutters to herself, pulling herself to standing position. She undoes her helmet and slings it under one arm, and shakes hands with whatever teammates she comes across on her way out of the court, heading for the showers.

“Griffin!” a voice calls from behind, and she comes to a stop. She’s friendly enough with her teammates, but only so they can play together; there’d be no reason for one of them to call after her.

She spins on her heel, and spots her coach walking towards her, accompanied by a man with a greying beard she doesn’t recognise. Coach Jaha looks a mixture between annoyed and friendly, which is a contrast to his usual disconcerting serenity.

Jaha gestures to the man next to him. “Clarke, I’d like to introduce you to - ”

“Marcus Kane,” the man interrupts, holding his hand out. Jaha flicks him an irritated look, but doesn’t say anything.

Clarke blinks at him. “You coach the Ark U Foxes,” she says, trying not to let the awe creep into her voice. She shakes his hand, unable to take her eyes from his face. She recognises him now as the man responsible for the most infamous team in the NCAA, always the subject of scrutiny and criticism from journalists and sports reporters alike for having what is known as the most obscure selection method for his team.

Kane inclines his head. “I do.”

“What brings you to Washington, sir?” she asks, trying to settle her confusion with her racing heart rate.

“Mr. Kane - ” Jaha begins.

“I’d like to recruit you for my team,” Kane cuts across again, stunning Clarke. Her brain tries to process what he said, but keeps tripping over the word ‘recruit’.

“Sorry?” she says. She must have misheard him, there’s no way  _ Marcus Kane _ , the coach of a Class I team would fly all the way to  _ Washington _ to recruit a freshman offensive dealer, not when there’s more and more Exy players graduating high school each year.

“I think you would do well with the Foxes. Better than you’re doing now, anyway,” he says, with a wry smile and a glance at Jaha.

“Are you sure you’re talking to the right Clarke Griffin? I was recruited for a Class II team, sir, not Class I.”

“I’m aware,” Kane says. “They weren’t your only option, though.” He looks at her for a moment, and Clarke reaches the realisation that this man has read her whole file, possibly every file. 

She swallows.

“You were offered a place at USC, playing for a Class I team. But you turned them down. I believe, Ms. Griffin, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you came here not because it was your only option, but because it was the only one that offered you a full scholarship as well. Am I right?”

Clarke doesn’t dare answer him, just maintains eye contact, aware of every fiber in her body, every pulse and breath.

“Interesting, how a young girl descended from two  _ incredibly _ wealthy families had to get a scholarship to go to college, no?”

Clarke bristles at that, but doesn’t take the bait. “Why do you think I’d be a good fit for the Foxes?” she asks instead. Kane pauses, and looks in her eyes, with such seriousness that she wants to look away.

“You’re a great player. Brilliant, even. And I need an offensive dealer.” he says, and from the gravity in his voice, she wants to believe it.

“So much so that you’d recruit from another school.”

He nods. “So much so.”

“And what about the - other criteria for your team?” she asks, scepticism lining every word, and she thinks back to his vague comment about her needing a scholarship. 

Kane looks at her again, and she wishes he’d stop. “I think you know the answer to that, Ms. Griffin.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she just looks him in the eye. 

“Your coach is an old friend of mine. He has agreed to let you transfer to Ark U, if you want to.” Kane says, and honestly, Clarke had forgotten Jaha was even there.

“This is a good school, sir.” she says evenly.

“Yes, but did you want to go to a good school, or did you want to play Exy?”

Clarke gets a dangerous glint in her eye as she smiles at Kane, and he grins back.

* * *

The months between Kane’s visit and the beginning of summer training with the Foxes both drags and flies by. It feels like in no time she’s signed all the paperwork allowing her to transfer, and then the subsequent weeks pass by in agony as she itches to get on an Exy court again. 

She steps out onto the pavement outside the airport in South Carolina, and time finally moves at a regular pace. Kane appears at her side moments later, having met her at baggage claim, and gestures for her to follow him to his car.

“Excited?” Kane asks as she slips into the passenger seat of his beat up truck.

“More than ever,” Clarke answers truthfully. She never thought she’d need to do it again; arriving at a new college, meeting new teammates and learning to deal with a whole new dynamic to her previous team, but the parts of her that are nervous to meet her new team are overridden by her excitement to play with a Class I team. 

Kane grins. “You should be. I think we’re in for an interesting year.”

“Yeah?”

“I know they get a lot of bad press, but I believe in my team, Clarke. I think this could be the year for us.”

Clarke doesn’t answer, just nods. Kane must take note of her silence, because he adds, “Do you know much? About the team?”

Clarke shrugs. “Just what everyone else knows, I guess. I know a few of the senior players from the news, but I don’t really pay much attention to sports tabloids,”

Kane nods knowingly. “They’re not a bad bunch, under all the grit. You’ll meet some of them today, I hope. A few of them are due to fly in today, but you’re the first arrival. You can wait with me until one of the girls can come by and bring you to the dorms.”

Clarke nods, and wonders which of the female team members would come to collect her. Like Clarke’s old team, the Foxes’ team was made up of more men than women. Clarke was more than familiar with the stigma surrounding female Exy players, even nowadays. She couldn’t wait to meet them.

They spend the rest of the drive to Ark U in silence, leaving Clarke to her thoughts.

Kane’s apartment is modest, with the furnishings Clarke would expect from a male bachelor. She leaves her bags by the doorway, and has a quick look around the place, before following Kane to the kitchen.

“Glass of water?” he offers, and she nods her thanks. “I actually forgot, one of the girls is already here, has been since yesterday. I sent her a text when we got here, she said she’d be over soon, so you don’t have to be stuck with an old dustbag like me for very long.”

The way he says it, Clarke gets the impression that he was used to his team berating him for his age. He dismisses her with the wave of a hand, and mutters something about heading into his office. Feeling awkward just standing in the kitchen, she goes to sit on the sofa in the living room, waiting for her mystery chauffeur to show up.

It’s not long before the door to the apartment swings open, and a girl a little taller than Clarke enters the room, her brown ponytail swishing behind her. She wears a low cut tank top, and the only thing that stops Clarke from staring at her chest was the faded track marks on her arms, unconcealed. Clarke swallows, and looks her in the eye. The girl smiles and nods her head.

“Octavia Blake,” she says. “You must be Clarke. I’m here to bring you over to the dorm, get you out of Kane’s sight ‘n all.”

“I can hear you, Blake,” Kane calls from his office, and Octavia rolls her eyes. 

“Good to see you too, old man!” she calls back, a smirk playing at her lips. She returns her attention to Clarke. “You good to go?”

Clarke nods, and goes to grab her stuff. “Does all the team have a key to your coach’s apartment?” she asks, a little incredulously.

“ _ Our _ coach’s apartment,” Octavia says with an exaggerated wink, pulling open the front door. “Bye Kane!” she calls, to which the coach doesn’t respond. “And nah, just me and Bell. We’re special.”

Clarke doesn’t know who ‘Bell’ is, but doesn’t ask. Octavia carries one of her bags for her as they make their way down to the parking lot. 

“I’m surprised Kane came to collect you from the airport himself.” Octavia says as she leads the way to her car, a garish blue Volkswagen Beetle. “I’m not used to him giving preferential treatment.”

Clarke nearly stumbles “I don’t think it was - ”

“Kidding, relax.” Octavia laughs. She opens the back doors and helps Clarke throw her luggage in the back of the car, before getting in the driver’s seat.

They sit in the car, and Clarke has a chance to examine the other girl. She knows the names of two of the other girls on the lineup, two juniors, but the name Octavia doesn’t ring any bells. However, ‘Blake’ does sound familiar. She carries herself with a confident Clarke couldn’t imagine for a freshman player, certainly not any of the ones she met, and she was comfortable enough with Kane that she must have known him the year before. Still, she thought she knew the Foxes’ lineup better than that.

Then, the pieces fit together.

“Wait, Blake?” she says, annoyed she didn’t get it sooner. “As in - ”

“Bellamy Blake, yeah. He’s my older brother.” Octavia replies, and Clarke doesn’t miss the glow of pride in her voice.

Clarke nods, awestruck. “Wow. So when you said Bell earlier, you meant - ”

“Yep. You’ll meet him later at dinner, I think. He’s collecting Miller - our goalkeeper, from his dad’s place a state over.”

The name Bellamy Blake Clarke does recognise. Captain of the Foxes for the second year in a row, he currently held the record for the most fights participated in during an Exy game (though some journalists speculated this was because his teammate, John Murphy, was benched for nearly a whole season on academic probation). Blake was known for both charming and mouthing off to reporters, as well as being one of the best starting strikers collegiate Exy had ever seen. He was the face of the Ark U Foxes, and nearly any article mentioning the team referred to Blake as well. Any article about Blake himself mourned the fact that he was stuck with such a turbulent team as the Foxes, when he could rise playing for other university teams, but always ended with reference to his two years in juvenile detention.

“Can’t wait,” Clarke says, and at the time, she means it. 

“Voilá,” Octavia says when they pull up to Fox Tower, the hulking athlete dormitory. “Our team’s all on the top floor. Contain the problem, minimise its chances of infecting the rest of the student body, you know?”

At Clarke’s blank face, she smirks. “You’ll get what I mean in a few days. Beginning of the semester is always the best.”

Clarke doesn’t really know what she means by that, so just grabs her luggage out of the car and follows Octavia to the entrance and then up the stairs. The dormitories are quiet, since it’s so early. The Exy season is one of the earliest to start, and one of the only teams to have summer practice, so the place rightfully deserted. Clarke takes the bag Octavia was holding for her while she gets the door open.

“I’ve taken the top bunk in the bedroom. It doesn’t matter really where you go, but we just need to leave a bottom bunk for Raven. She messed up her leg last season, and while it’s fine for practice she can’t really do ladders.”

Raven is another player Clarke has actually heard of. Raven Reyes, junior, was ranked as one of the best goalkeepers in collegiate Exy the year previous. There was no footage of her in interviews except for a few at the beginning of her freshman year. Rumour was that Kane forbid her from talking to the press after starting fights with reporters. Apparently, she’d been brought up in the foster care system, and some journalists blamed this for her violence. 

Clarke is really looking forward to meeting her.

While she starts unpacking, Octavia heads back out, muttering something about needing to bring in groceries from the car. She’s not gone long, and when Clarke hears the door click open, she goes to help her.

Not moments later, a knock comes at the door, and two boys stick their heads in. The two of them have dark hair that falls in front of their eyes and goofy smiles, and Clarke takes a liking to them almost instantly. 

“Mind if we come in?” one of them says when they catch sight of Octavia. Octavia shoves the groceries she was unpacking into the fridge. “Jasper! Monty! Come in!” she says, gesturing wildly for them to do just that.

“Hey, Octavia,” one of the boys (Jasper-or-Monty) says, and she bounces across the room to envelop him in a hug. 

“Hi, Monty,” she says, with an easy familiarity that really makes Clarke feel like an awkward bystander. Octavia lets him go and switches to the other guy (who must be Jasper), who doesn’t even have a chance to greet her before she hugs him.

While this is going on, Monty, the first one Octavia hugged, picks his ways across the disaster zone their room’s become towards Clarke.

“Hey,” he says, holding his hand out. “I’m Monty,”

“Clarke,” she says, shaking his hand. “Your new offensive dealer.”

Monty’s smile is warm. “So I heard. We’re glad to have you. The last guy was - ” he pauses. “Not up to the task.”

Clarke looks at him quizzically, but he doesn’t elaborate. “This is Jasper,” he says instead. “We’re staying next door, with our teddy bear of a roommate. We’re gonna be your backliners this year.”

Clarke measures the two of them up against the backliners she’s used to seeing. The quarters nearest the goal are always the most violent, and on most teams she’s seen, backliners have had a certain degree of bulk to help them deal with the jostling and pushing that comes with the position. Monty and Jasper seem slim and somewhat lanky, and she wonders if she would have even guessed they were athletes.

But she just nods, then asks, “Have you two been on the team long? Sorry, I haven’t done the research I should have, obviously.”

Jasper lets out a small laugh at that. “Don’t worry, we’re not exactly front-page news like Bellamy or Raven. We’re sophomores, like you.”

Clarke nods again, but still feels a pang of guilt. She’s the newbie, and everyone on the team is going to know who she is, but she feels like she’s going to have trouble putting names to faces for at least a few days. 

“Can I ask about that, actually?” Monty says. Clarke blinks at him.

“About what?”

“The sophomore thing,” Monty explains. “We had bets running, but none of us could actually figure out why Coach wanted to get an offensive dealer who’s in sophomore year instead of someone out of highschool. No offense, though.”

Clarke can’t help but smile. “Trust me, I was as confused as you are. But when someone comes and offers to let you play for a Class I team, you don’t ask questions.”

“Even a team like the Foxes?” Jasper asks, an eyebrow raised. She knows what he means, knows he’s asking her if she really thinks she belongs with them. She thinks back to a conversation she had over the phone with Wells, the day after Kane came to visit her in Washington.

“Honestly Clarke, are you sure?” Wells asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be sure? This is a  _ Class I _ team, Wells. It’s a chance I’ve never got.”

“Yeah, but the Foxes, Clarke. They only take players from troubled backgrounds. Is that the kind of setting you think you should be in? Especially after - ”

“I think it’s the perfect setting, Wells.” 

With that in mind, she looks at Jasper with conviction. “Even a team like the Foxes,” and Jasper grins.

“Well,” Monty says, clapping her on the shoulder. “Welcome to the team. I promise that at one point in the next week, we will get you blind drunk as celebration.”

“Yeah,” Jasper says, slinging his arm around Octavia’s shoulder. “Only the proper treatment for our two newest teammates,”

Clarke looks at the two of them, confused. “Wait, Octavia, you’re a freshman?”

She holds her hands up in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”

“Then how do you know all the team?”

Monty claps his hands. “Well, since our  _ beloved _ captain is a paranoid older brother before anything else - ”

“I went to the high school in the city, and Bell made me come to all his games, all his practices, and nearly every team social event for the last three years because he was worried about leaving me home alone. I was basically the mascot from age fifteen on.” she says it with a roll of the eyes, but her fondness for her brother bleeds out.

Clarke attempts to slot this information of Bellamy Blake, older brother extraordinaire with the knowledge of his time in juvie and tendency for violence, and she has to admit, it makes an odd picture. But she hasn’t  _ actually _ met Bellamy yet, so that could all change.

“And she finally made it!” Jasper says, ruffling her hair. 

“Imagine if you didn’t play Exy,” Clarke muses, and Octavia lets out a long breath of air.

“Listen,” she says, waving her hand for emphasis. “I know. I basically didn’t have a choice, since Bell came to Ark U. It was all he could talk about when we met up, and like I said, I was brought to everything. The only thing that got me out of his twenty-four hour supervision was when I joined my high school team.”

“I get that,” Clarke says, thinking back to her own parents’ strict supervision. She then panics, wondering if one of them would ask about her family.

“So Jas,” Octavia says instead, and Clarke chastises herself for being so paranoid. “Did you guys bring any games? Raven’s not here yet, so we’ve nothing set up.”

Jasper affects offense. “Did we bring -  _ did we bring _ any games? Blake, you wound me. C’mon, we have Super Smash Bros inside.”

With that, the three of them head next door. Clarke is about to return to unpacking when Octavia calls her name.

“Clarke? Come on, you can be on my team.”

She freezes for a second, but follows her into Monty and Jasper’s room. Something warm settles in Clarke, reaching all the way to her toes.

* * *

“Are you guys going for dinner at Kane’s later?” Octavia asks during a lull in the gaming. She nudges Monty. “Miller’s gonna be there,”

While Monty ducks his head and his cheeks turn a fierce shade of pink, Jasper answers. “Nah, we’ll pass. We have a lot of video-games to play before Kane decides to run us into the ground. Tell Nyko we say hi, though.”

“Your loss,” she shrugs, but she must spot Clarke’s confused expression, because she clarifies. “Nyko’s the team’s doctor. You’ll have to meet him soon so he can run a check on you, make sure everything’s ticking in the right directions.”

“That isn’t a saying,” Monty says, to which Octavia just flips him off.

“So at this dinner - ” Clarke begins.

“It’s looking like it’s going to be you, me, Bell, Miller, Kane and Nyko. And yes,” she says, pointing at Clarke. “You do have to come.”

How Octavia figured out the kind of person she was in so little time is kind of beyond Clarke, but in an awe-inspiring way. Octavia really doesn’t seem like the kind of girl she wants to fuck with.

When the time for the dinner rolls around, the two girls head for the car, and honestly, Clarke doesn’t know what to expect. Octavia has an almost familial closeness with everyone on the team, it seems, and Clarke’s clearly going to be the outsider at this meal. Additionally, she’s meeting two new teammates, and she can’t deny the teacher’s pet part of her that wants them to like her. 

Maybe she should have stayed in Washington.

The drive to Kane’s feels shorter than it had earlier, and they’re there in what feels like no time. 

“We’re late,” Octavia informs her as she slams the car door shut. “Which, knowing Kane, means we’re early, because he never starts preparing food until he’s hungry, even if the food will take an hour to cook,”

“So should I say sorry?” Clarke says, following Octavia into the building.

“Not at all. It’s what he gets for being a near-incompetent bachelor. We have a bet going on whether he’s secretly married to someone who lives off campus and is just messing with us all. You’re welcome to take either side.”

“Which side did you put your money on?” Clarke asks as they head up the stairs.

“The secretly married thing was  _ my idea _ . I don’t even care if I’m wrong, it’s just too good a story to let die.”

They stop at Kane’s door, and Octavia unlocks it with the same key from earlier. She steps into the room as the door swings open, and Clarke follows behind her. A guy Clarke doesn’t recognise, with dark skin and a stubble, spots them first.

“Octavia!” he says, and she goes over to hug him. Clarke realises, a little belatedly, that this must be Miller.

“What, no hug for your brother?” a gruff voice says, and Octavia rolls her eyes.

“Please, like I didn’t see you  _ yesterday _ ,” she says, but she still wraps him in a tight hug.

Even without Octavia hugging him, Clarke recognises Bellamy Blake straight away. One look at him made it obvious why he was a popular poster-boy for Exy, with his strong jawline, cheekbones and dark curls. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, the kind of guy Clarke expects to come across in Exy. When Octavia releases him, his eyes fall on her, and the set of his jaw is a firm in a way that doesn’t exactly seem friendly. 

“Bell, Miller,” Octavia says, going to pull Clarke further into the room by the arm. “This is Clarke, our new offensive dealer.”

“Griffin,” Blake addresses her, with no warmth in his voice. “Heard you learned to play in private school.”

The little part of her that wanted Bellamy Blake to like her dies a quick death. Instead of mourning it, she decides to take it on the chin. “Heard you learned in juvie,” she replies, looking him in the eye.

He crosses his arms, unimpressed. Her own stubbornness won’t let her break the silence or look away from his stare, which means the atmosphere gets a little tenser than she would like, for her first meal with her teammates. 

It’s Miller who breaks the silence in the end, clapping Blake on the back, forcing him to look away from her. He then reaches out a hand to Clarke.

“Hey,” he says. “Nathan Miller. Goalkeeper. Welcome to the team.” Then, with a glance at Blake, who’s gone to help Kane set up for dinner, adds, “Good luck.”

She smiles in thanks, glancing over in Blake’s direction too. She catches Blake’s eye accidentally, and she’s met once again with the full-force stoniness of his glare.

_ Well, _ she thinks to herself.  _ At least it won’t be a boring year _ .


	2. is this more than you bargained for yet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, I'm sorry, I wanted to get this up before Christmas but I suddenly developed a social life so this had to be put on pause. anyway, I hope you like it!

It takes Clarke less than twenty-four hours to figure out that not only does Bellamy Blake not like her, but he seems to take issue with her very existence. 

Dinner at Kane’s is somewhat surreal, because Blake manages to be friendly and joke around with his sister and Miller, but anytime Clarke goes to say anything, or someone at the table seems to acknowledge her presence at the table, his expression reverts to the stony glare he had when she greeted him. What’s weirder is that no one else seems to notice, or if they do, they don’t think to make any comment on it. 

They’re washing up afterwards, and Clarke making a conscious effort to make sure she stays out of Blake’s way. He and Octavia are involved in what appears to be a fight, where the winner is the one that flicks the most lukewarm, sudsy water on the other. They’re shoving each other with the playfulness Clarke always associated with siblings, and although she’s meant to be there, she feels oddly like she’s looking in the window of someone else’s life.

Which might explain why her stomach drops when Kane says, “Bellamy. I need you to take Clarke down to the Court tomorrow, show her around, tell her the codes to get in. That alright?”

Based on her limited interaction with Blake, she expects him to refuse, but instead, without even taking his eyes away from his task, he mutters, “Yeah, alright.”

They don’t hang around much after that, and Kane shoos the four of them out of his apartment with no pretense of kindness. “Get out of my sight, brats.”

Bellamy and Miller walk in a pair down the stairs, with Octavia following so close behind her brother often turns to her to tell her to stop stepping on his heels. Clarke lags behind, not wanting to interact with the elder Blake more than she needs to. 

“Bell’s a little protective,” Octavia says, the first second they slip into her car. 

Clarke glances at her. “What exactly does that mean?”

Octavia shrugs. “It’s tough to explain, especially when you don’t know Bell. He doesn’t know you, so I think he’s a little wary.”

“Kind of a dickish way to treat you new recruit, though,” Clarke can’t help but saying. 

“No disagreement from me,” Octavia says. “He’s our captain, and my brother, and I love him, but yeah. He’s not perfect.”

The next morning, Clarke’s woken up by the sound of shrieks from outside the bedroom. She sits up in a start, and forgets where she is, for a minute, and all she can feel is fear settling in her gut, darkness filling her vision. Until the door to the bedroom opens, and Octavia’s voice shakes her out of it.

“Clarke! Come meet Luna and Raven!”

Blinking sleep out of her eyes, Clarke stumbles into the living area where two girls are standing. They are, Clarke presumes, Luna and Raven. 

Looking at Luna Waters, Clarke notices that she’s the kind of gentle Clarke isn’t familiar with in context of Exy. She’s all soft edges, delicate waves of hair framing her face, a kind smile aimed Clarke’s way. Clarke’s seen clips of Luna playing, and she feels a kind of kinship with her, just by virtue of her being the other dealer. The two would never play alongside each other, but Clarke knows from experience that the dealers in a team form a kind of bond, because they have to deal with the other teammates’ bullshit. 

Raven Reyes is, without exaggeration, one of the most attractive people Clarke has ever seen. She stands and watches Clarke with a tilted jaw and a cocky look in her eye, the kind of easy confidence that would fit in anywhere. Clarke is, admittedly, a little starstruck.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Clarke.”

“The newest offensive dealer,” Raven says, with a glint in her eye that makes Clarke feel like prey looking into the eyes of their predator. “I’m Raven.”

“Best goalkeeper in the whole damn south,” Luna adds, and Raven smirks.

“Damn straight.”

Luna extends a hand to Clarke. “Nice to meet you, Clarke. I’m Luna.”

“Defensive dealer,” Clarke says, shaking her hand. Luna smiles.

“You’ve done your homework,” she says, and Clarke feels herself blushing. 

“Way to pick your sides, Clarke,” Octavia smacks her on the arm. “You hadn’t even  _ heard _ of me, Jasper or Monty when you got here!”

“You literally  _ just _ joined the team, Blake,” Raven says, rolling her eyes. “Cut her some slack. We can’t all be as awesome as me and Luna. It’s tough, but you’re going to have to live with it.”

Octavia nods, seemingly accepting that as truth. Clarke feels instantly lucky for the assignment of roommates. 

“So Clarke,” Raven says, collapsing onto one of the sofas, apparently deciding that after introductions were done she had no obligation to remain standing. “I hear Bellamy gave you the cold shoulder,”

Clarke lets out a huff of laughter. “Something like that, yeah.”

Raven rolls her eyes. “Typical Bellamy,”

“What do you mean?” Clarke furrows her brow and looks to Octavia for explanation, but Octavia says nothing.

When she refocuses on Raven, she just waves her hand. “Bellamy’s all rough edges, but he’s a big softie really. He’ll come around.”

“He’s supposed to meet me today to show me around the court before we all meet as a team.” Clarke glances at Octavia before she continues. “Should I be worried?”

Again, Raven waves her hand dismissively. “Bellamy’s team captain. He’s not going to do anything that jeopardises the team, so you have nothing to worry about.”

That doesn’t exactly do much to calm Clarke’s nerves. When Clarke’s expression doesn’t totally ease, Luna speaks up. “Seriously, Clarke. This team might be fucked up in a lot of ways, but Bellamy’s the least of your problems.”

“Yeah,” Octavia grins. “You haven’t even  _ met _ Murphy yet.”

They sit together for a while, Raven and Luna filling Octavia in on their respective summers, and Octavia lamenting her summer spent at home with Bellamy. She explains to Clarke that this is Bellamy’s first year since freshman year actually living in the college dorms, because he couldn’t justify staying in them if Octavia was going to have to stay in a foster home otherwise. 

At around twelve, someone knocks on their door. Octavia springs up to answer it. Clarke hears Bellamy Blake before she sees him.

“Hey, Raven, Luna,” he says, apparently without malice and absent of any gruffness Clarke was steeling herself for. “Is Clarke here?”

She holds her hand up, like a student answering a question in class. She looks over at him as she stands up, and she can actually see the way his expression shifts as his gaze flits from looking at Raven to making eye contact with her. It’s not like Blake was smiling when he looked at Raven, but when he looks at Clarke, any softness or fondness leaves his face, replaced by that same distrusting stoniness she recalls from the night before.

Again, she wonders if she should have stayed in Washington.

He gives her a quick once over. “Okay, let’s go, Griffin. O, Raven, Luna, I’ll see you guys later.”

Clarke follows Blake out of the suite, and feels a curling nervousness in her stomach like a kid on the way to the principal’s office. She doesn’t try to start conversation with him, and he returns the favour. The two of them make their way to his car in silence, and Clarke wishes she had a knife to cut the tension with. 

When they reach the Foxhole Court, Clarke is filled with a reverent awe that lets her forget about her less-than-friendly companion. A monster of a building, it stands out against the rest of the campus buildings due to its stark white paint job and the massive orange fox paws painted on each wall. Clarke’s practically giddy with excitement as she follows Blake over to the door. 

“Code changes every few months. Right now it’s 1319,” Blake tells her in a detached voice as he punches in the numbers. “Me and Kane are the only ones with a set of keys, but if you want them, talk to Kane about it.” He looks at her with purpose. “You’ll probably need to practice.”

She swallows, trying to ignore the way her nervousness boils to anger. She clenches her fists and tries to think of a witty retort, but comes up blank. Instead, she follows Blake as he steps into the stadium. 

“Down this hallway is the changing rooms, girls on the left, boys on the right. Nyko’s office is at the end, there.” he directs her with precise but quick gestures. “Your uniform should already be in your locker in the girls’ room. You can look at it when we’re done here.”

He leads her the other direction from the changing rooms. “Down there’s the reception area - it’s where we’ll meet coach in a while. There’s a room for meeting press down to the left, and through  _ this _ door,” he pauses, pulling a set of keys out of his pocket, unlocking a large, heavy-looking door. “Is the court.”

The two of them step through, and Clarke’s met with the ceiling high plexiglass that encompasses the court. She nearly spins in place, taking in the sheer volume of seats, the pristine court and goals. If it hadn’t clicked with her that she had been signed to a Class I team before, this was the moment. 

“It’s incredible,” she says, breathless. Blake cuts a look at her.

“Yeah, well.” he turns on his heel and heads back to the hallway. “It’s where we’ll see if you deserve the place Kane gave you.”

She prickles at that, but it’s not like she hadn’t been thinking it. It’s what had been going through her head throughout her entire first meeting with Kane - did she really deserve the place he wanted to give her? Still, having Blake voice her concerns, with his voice so full of skepticism, is less than ideal.

With that, Blake leaves her for the reception area, instructing her to go check out her uniform before coming to wait for the others. She follows his instructions, but a part of her doesn’t sit right with his entire attitude since they left the girls’ suite.

The thing is, there’s nothing specifically  _ wrong _ with the tour Bellamy gives her. It’s quick and to the point. Yet, when she contrasts it with the welcome she received from his sister the day before, it feels more like a tour an agitated tour guide at the end of his shift would give someone who wandered in at five minutes to close - fast, brash, and kind of rude. Where Octavia’s introduction to the dorms was filled with jokes and tidbits about the team, Bellamy barely provides her with the essentials. 

Clarke doesn’t really draw that much anymore, but in her head, she can visualise the varying portraits of Bellamy Blake that she’s come across. In sharp lines and vibrant colours, there’s the Bellamy Blake she knows from the media, cutting and dangerous. In softer strokes of pastel, she can see Bellamy Blake as Octavia has explained him to her, an older brother who convinced his younger sister to like the same sport as him just through exposure. Finally, in smudgy dark greys, there’s Bellamy Blake as Clarke has experienced him first-hand - cold, unfriendly and untrusting.

Just as Blake promised, Clarke finds her uniform, both home, away, and what she’ll use for practice. A warmth washes through her as soon as she sees ‘GRIFFIN’ in white against the glaring orange.

“Clarke Griffin, number five, offensive dealer,” she whispers to herself, trying to contain her excitement. 

She makes her way to the reception area slowly, but is relieved to find that she’s not going to just be alone with Bellamy. Miller, the goalkeeper Clarke met the night before is seated on a sofa next to Blake, and he raises a hand in a wave when she walks in. In the corner, in an ageing armchair that he absolutely dwarfs sits the largest man Clarke thinks she’s ever met. He’s dark-skinned with hair shaved close to his head, and Clarke can see tattoos circling his biceps where his t-shirt sleeves end. 

He stands up the second he spots her, holding out a hand to her. “Clarke, isn’t it? Monty and Jasper told me about you. My name is Lincoln. I’m the third backliner.”

She blinks at him for a moment. “Monty and Jasper - ?”

“They’re my roommates,” he explains. “Nerdy, kind of easily excitable?”

Clarke can’t help but smile at that. “No, yeah, I met them.” She has a hard time aligning this guy, who seems to be made of nearly entirely muscle, with Monty’s description of his ‘teddy bear of a roommate’, but doesn’t question it.

She takes a seat on the sofa that’s next to Lincoln, and watches the door, waiting for the others to come in. They filter in slowly; Monty and Jasper arrive with Octavia, the three of them involved in some gossip using names that totally fly over Clarke’s head. Monty and Jasper slot next to Clarke on the sofa, while Octavia sits on the arm rest, placing her between Clarke and Lincoln. Raven and Luna arrive about five minutes later, with Raven joining Monty and Jasper’s end of the sofa, and Luna choosing an armchair by Lincoln.

Clarke sits back and lets conversation flow around her as they wait for Kane to arrive. Octavia has pretty much abandoned her conversation with Monty and Jasper and has turned her attention to Lincoln. Raven, at the edge of the couch closest to Miller and Bellamy, has struck up a conversation with them about their classes. 

Kane pushes through the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. “Are we all here?” he asks with a puzzled look, doing a quick head check. 

“Murphy’s on his way, Coach,” Bellamy volunteers, and just seconds after he says it, a somewhat greasy guy bursts through the door. John Murphy has a glare that rakes the room like a shark, and he gives off the distinct impression that if you ran into him in a dark alley, you’d leave with more stab wounds than you initially entered with. 

“Well,” Kane says, unamused. “That's everyone.”

With a cursory glance at Kane, Murphy collapses onto the sofa next to Miller. 

“Wait,” Clarke can't help saying. She looks around the room, taking in all of her teammates, who, including her, count to ten. It's barely enough players to officially be allowed play in the league. Other than Octavia, all her teammates are sophomores or older. 

When Kane turns to look at her, she continues. “Me and Octavia are the only new recruits this year?” she asks, not sure if she can believe it. In her old university, she had been one of five freshman recruits.

Instead of letting Kane answer, Jasper beside her just shrugs. “Weird, right? But I’ve never tried to even pretend to understand Coach’s methods, so I’d say you just roll with it.”

“Jordan, I’m right here,” Kane warns him.

“Sorry Coach.”Jasper says, light and without meaning.

Kane rolls his eyes, but doesn’t chastise him. “Alright, well, everyone, if you haven’t already met her, this is Clarke Griffin, our newest offensive dealer. I think she’ll be a valuable asset to the team. Clarke, anything you’d like to say”

When she shakes her head, he continues. “Anyone else? Questions, comments?”

“Yeah, Coach,” Murphy bristles from his place. “I wanna know why you thought bringing some - ” Murphy points his finger at Clarke.

Kane cuts him off like he hadn’t been speaking at all. “Nobody? Great. First practice is tomorrow at 8.30, everyone. That’s 8.30 on the button, people. If you are a second late, I will have you doing laps until you puke. Understood?”

“Yes, Coach,” the team mumble in response.

“Understood?” Kane repeats.

“Yes, Coach!” they reply, once more with feeling. 

Kane nods, satisfied. “Okay, get out of my sight. You know you need to go for physical examinations with Nyko if you haven’t already, so make sure you talk to him about that.”

Everyone clambers to get up and out. Clarke’s making her way to the door when Kane calls her back. “Clarke, Bellamy, a moment.”

Clarke glances at Octavia, looking for an explanation, but Octavia just shrugs and mouths ‘I’ll see you outside’ to her.

Clarke goes to stand next to Blake, who’s facing Kane with crossed arms and an unreadable expression. She can’t help feeling antsy, shoving her hands in her pockets and shifting foot to foot.

Kane regards the both of them for a moment, before flicking his eyes to his clipboard again. “Bellamy, I was hoping you could run Clarke through a few of our drills, get her up to speed on our training methods, so she won’t be totally out of her depth tomorrow. Is that okay?” he finishes addressing both of them.

Clarke blinks at him. “Like, now?”

“What, Princess, that not fit your schedule?” Blake scoffs, disdain heavy in his voice. It’s the first show of open hostility from him, and Clarke’s almost grateful for it. At least he was showing his cards, instead of falsely maintaining his stony poker face. 

“No, not at all,” she smiles. If there’s anything private school taught her, it was passive aggression. “Just wanted to make sure I was on the right page, is all.”

“Great,” Kane says. “Go change, both of you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, Kane exits the room, and Clarke is left alone with Blake. He looks her over, and she gets the distinct impression that if he were anything other than team captain, he wouldn’t stay in the building longer than ten seconds with her. As it is, though, he just nods his head towards the door.

“Go change. I’ll see you on the court.”

The girls’ changing room is eerily quiet as Clarke starts pulling her gear on. Fitting her chest and shoulder padding around her bra takes longer than she’d like, but once that’s taken care of, she gets her jersey, shorts and shin guards on with little difficulty. There’s no mirror in the changing rooms, but Clarke can visualise herself, a nightmare in orange. She allows herself to smile, brief and secret, before going out to meet Blake, helmet in one hand and racquet in the other. 

When she gets to the court, he’s jogging short laps around the half court. He stops jogging when he sees her, and leans his racquet on his shoulder, cocky and sure. He’s silent as he goes for a bucket of balls by the goal. 

“We’ll work on passing and precision of aim,” he says, finally. “No offense, but since I haven’t seen you play, and you  _ did _ come from a Class II team…” He trails off, letting her finish the sentence for herself. She feels her anger like it’s a living thing in her stomach, but doesn’t let herself hold onto it. 

She grimaces. “I understand. Let’s get started, then.”

He starts tossing a ball in his free hand, sizing her up. He makes his way for half court. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

They start by jogging up and down the court, simply passing the ball back and forth, while Clarke refamiliarises herself with the feeling of a racquet in her hands. Blake complicates it, making her cross paths with him and weave around him, but the principle remains the same. It’s when he starts to speed it up that she’s met with the instant awareness that she’s playing with a way better player than her. 

Blake had been playing longer than she had, so it makes sense that he’s the more seasoned player, but he plays with a speed and dexterity and downright  _ ease _ that no amount of practice could master. When the ball bounces out of her racquet for the third time, she can see his expression, though obscured by the grate of his helmet, skeptical and almost mocking. To his credit, he doesn’t stoop so low as to actually mock her, and just tells her to start again. 

He vanishes from the court for a moment, returning with a stack of cones. She watches as he sets them up in a line in front of the goal. “As the dealer, you’re mostly going to be concerned with passing to your teammates. You can’t always rely on them to be where the ball goes. You need to put the ball where they are.” He pauses. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

He jogs past her, grabbing a ball from the bucket, firing it at the first cone in the line, knocking it down. He repeats the action until all the cones are knocked down, and goes to line them up again. 

“Knock them down.” he says, and steps back. Her first try, Clarke gets six of the ten cones, and Blake just looks at her, unsympathetic. “Again.”

She loses count of how many times she fires at those cones, but even when she gets all ten, Blake makes her keep going. She doesn’t let up, even when her upper arms are practically shaking with the effort, because she refuses to let Blake even think he could be right about her.

After what feels like an age, he holds up a hand to stop her. 

“It looks like I have my work cut out for me.” he says. “Listen. I’m team captain, so as far as I see it, your failures are my failures. I don’t know what Kane was thinking, bringing a private school princess like you to our team, but that’s not my place. We’re going to train every day - and I mean  _ every day _ , until the semester starts, and if you’re not up to scratch by then, well, we can kiss this season goodbye. Deal?”

She pulls her helmet off and meets his gaze. “Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exy is a made up sport and these are made up drills. I know nothing about sports. go figure. you didn't come here for the sports and neither did I, let's not lie to ourselves.


	3. boy better treat me with respect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'll try upload a chapter every week  
> me: takes three months to upload. i'm sorry!! this chapter was a bitch to write for some reason, and it's not even that long.  
> anyway, i hope you enjoy this! i'll try get the next one up before july xo

Blake gives her a lift back to the dorms with the same tense silence they shared on the way over, like he hadn’t spent the last two hours running her into the ground. His hair is damp from the shower, curling slightly as it dries. He is, annoyingly, very attractive, and she’s aware of it in a way she’d rather not be. She doesn’t like him; she’s not allowed find him hot.

When she gets back to her dorm, she finds her roommates sprawled across the sofa and an armchair, screeching various expletives at each other as they engage in some first-person shooter game on a PlayStation that wasn’t there when Clarke left earlier that day.

They don’t notice her presence at first, mostly because they probably couldn’t hear her enter over their own din. She can’t help but smile at them, and she collapses into an empty armchair beside Raven.

“Clarke!” Raven says when she spots her. “You’re back.”

“You were gone for a while,” Luna observes.

“Mm,” Clarke hums, stretching out her neck. “Coach had me practice with Bellamy after the meeting, said something about making sure I wasn’t behind, or whatever.”

“And?” Octavia looks over at her. “How did it go?”

Clarke shrugs, wary of criticising Bellamy to his sister. “As expected, I guess. I have some catching up to do before the season starts, so we’re gonna have to train together every day until then.”

Raven lets out a sound that’s a cross between a laugh and a snort. “God, that should be fun.”

Octavia stands up, just to come pat her on the shoulder. “Better you than me,”

“Is it gonna be that bad?” Clarke asks, glad that she hadn’t been totally out of her mind when she found the practice gruelling at best.

“Bellamy’s tough,” Raven says. “He wants the best for the team, y’know, that’s obvious. It’s like a matter of personal pride for him.”

“It’s why he’s captain,” Luna adds. “No one wants to let him down, because he takes all of our failures as his own personal failures.”

Raven considers Clarke for a moment before she continues. “But, as you’ve already figured out, he doesn’t really seem to like you.”

“So he’s going to be twice as tough on you,” Octavia finishes, with this knowing look in her eye that probably comes with the knowledge only a sister can get.

Clarke groans. “Great.”

Raven just laughs, reaching over to pat her on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. So, do you wanna play a game?”

Clarke holds her hand out for a controller, which is received by cheers from her roommates.

* * *

That night, Octavia informs her that she and the other underclassmen are going out for a meal, and again, she has to come. Some faraway part of Clarke wonders how much of her college life going forward will consist solely of going to things her teammates tell her she has no choice in attending.

Monty and Jasper knock on their door at around seven, and Octavia makes a big deal of saying goodbye to Raven and Luna, like the two upperclassmen were her parents and she was going off to prom with her friends.

It’s fun to watch, even if she doesn’t really understand the context.

They take Octavia’s car. Monty and Jasper slide into the backseat without comment, which Clarke is grateful for, until Monty spends the whole ride leaning over her seat playing songs from his phone. Octavia drives them to a family-type diner called The Skybox, which has a vaguely fifties-style decor, with a colour scheme of pastel pinks and yellows.

She leads them to a booth in the corner of the diner, where, Clarke can’t help but notice, they’re basically hidden from most of the wait-staff. Clarke and Octavia sit down, while Octavia sends the two boys to get drinks and order food.

“I feel like I should thank you for inviting me,” Clarke says, watching as Octavia fiddles around, reorganising the saltshakers and napkin dispenser.  “But really, you didn’t give me a choice on coming or not, so I don’t really know if it counts as an invitation,”

Octavia smiles and turns her face towards Clarke’s. “We underclassmen have to stick together. The others, they’re fun and all, but they have this  level of intensity that honestly, no human under the age of twenty-one should have to deal with.”

At Clarke’s quizzical expression, she bats a hand. “You’ll see what I mean tomorrow.”

“So, fun question,” Jasper says, sliding into the booth across from Clarke and Octavia.

“That’s Jasper for not-so-fun and mildly-invasive question,” Monty interjects, handing Clarke her drink.

She lets out a soft laugh. “Uh, okay?”

“What was the reaction like when you said you were moving teams?”

“From my teammates?”

Jasper waves his hand. “Teammates, friends, family. I want all the juice.”

Clarke looks helplessly at Octavia, who just shrugs.

It’s Monty who saves her. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” he says, elbowing his best friend. Jasper just rolls his eyes, before looking at Clarke again, eyes pleading.

Clarke scratches at the back of her neck, averts her eyes from all of them. “I didn’t really… get along very well with my teammates.”

When she pauses, Jasper interrupts. “So?”

“I didn’t… uh, exactly… I didn’t tell them I was leaving.”

This elicits a bark of laughter from the table.

“So, what, did anyone know?” Octavia asks.

“My coach did! Kane approached him about my transfer. I figured he could tell my teammates, if they asked.”

Monty shakes his head. “Cold, Griffin, cold.”

“Man, I don’t think I could ever do that, just cut ties and move school, move state, without a word to anyone,” Jasper laughs.

Clarke smiles and takes a sip of her drink, hoping Jasper doesn’t think to ask about her family’s reactions.

Luckily for her, their food arrives, and conversation lulls as everyone digs in.

After their food, Monty and Jasper regale her with stories of their highschool antics.

“Man, we were arrested _so_ often,” Monty laughs. He says it with the careless abandon of someone unashamed of his past, and Clarke mentally marks it down as a note in his favour. Monty Green. Past felon. Practically proud of it.

Jasper bumps him with his shoulder. “Only because we _sucked_ at hiding shit. You know, one time - ” Jasper turns his attention to Clarke, waving a finger at her. “One time, we were getting high in Monty’s room, ‘cause he said his parents were away for the weekend -”

Monty groans. “No, not this story, man! We’re trying to convince her she should be friends with us!”

“No! She should hear this,” Jasper laughs. Clarke just looks over at Octavia, who smiles helplessly. “So we thought his parents were away for the weekend, but his dad ends up walking in on us, and _Monty_ , fuck, all Monty has to say for himself is ‘Dad, don’t take my weed!’”

Clarke looks at Monty in disbelief. He’s hanging his head, like he’s had to deal with Jasper telling this story to everyone they’ve ever met, and still hasn’t lived down the shame.

“I was grounded for a month,” he finally says, smiling slightly.

Octavia lets out a huff of laughter. “I doubt that stopped you, though,”

Monty grins wide, all dimples and teeth. “Who, me?”

The four of them laugh, and as it fades, Clarke lets her curiosity gets the best of her. “Did your coaches know? About the weed?” she asks, taking a sip of her drink.

The other three underclassmen exchange a look that she can’t decipher. Then, Jasper says, carefully, “There’s a lot of … under the radar drug use in Exy that coaches overlook.”

“Did they not have any of that in your school?” Octavia asks. “I’d thought that private school kids would all be on coke, or whatever.”

Clarke splutters on her drink. “Uh, I’m not sure. Not with any of my friends, I don’t think.”

Monty waves his drink at her, expression thoughtful. “Griffin, somehow I don’t think you had many friends.”

She can’t deny that, so she just smiles, trying to look knowing.

* * *

 

Clarke wakes up early for her first practice with the Foxes, every part of her buzzing with nerves. She’s seen clips of them, sure; she’s seen videos of Raven shutting down the goal, seen the way Bellamy fires the ball at the goal like it’s a bullet being released from a trigger, but she doesn’t know what they’re like in person, how they warm up. She wants to see how Monty and Jasper, the slightest members of the team, work with Lincoln. More than anything, she wants to be there with them, running and practicing and drilling. To prove herself, not to Kane, not to Blake, but to herself.

In the changing room, Raven must pick up on Clarke’s excitement as she pulls on her gear, because she lets out a quiet laugh after one look at her.

“Take it easy, Griffin,” she says, slapping her shoulder. “We don’t want anyone thinking you’re nervous.”

Clarke can’t help but flash a grin at her.

Practice with the Foxes is such a remarkable step up from her last team that it fills Clarke with a kind of electricity, ready to be unleashed at any second. There’s no post-break sluggishness, because their break was almost non-existent. The Foxes might be the lowest ranked Class I team, but they were a Class I team, no doubt about it.

What fascinates Clarke further is the tension that manifests on the court that she hadn’t seen anywhere else. From what she had seen, her teammates got along well enough, enough to make her forget one of the reasons the Foxes were so infamous in the NCAA.

Off the court, the Foxes (most of them, anyway) were friendly. Not polite, and not necessarily to everyone’s taste, but Clarke always liked people who were a little abrasive.

On the court, abrasive isn’t strong enough a word to describe them. It’s as if the second the Foxes step on the court they all become sharp as knives, rubbing against each other in all the wrong ways.

On that first day, it takes her a while to pick up on this tension. Blake greets them all - save for Clarke - with grins, asking about their summers, trading jibes about being out of shape. It’s clear to Clarke that he’s the centre of these practices, the one who spearheads it while Kane stands on the sidelines, interjecting every now and again. Blake takes his orders from Kane, but the team takes them from Blake. He leads them all on laps around the court, all of them holding their racquets. There’s no sound except for the pounding of feet, the sharp exhales of breath.

When they come to a stop, Blake spins to face them all. “Okay, everyone. You know the drill. Split into positions, and then we’ll run drills.”

Luna jogs over to Clarke. “So, obviously, we’re going to have different styles, you being offensive and all, but I figure we could work on footwork? I was talking to Kane, and I don’t know how you worked with your old team, but he said we could see what you’re like, and adapt. That alright?”

When Clarke thinks back on it later, it’s Luna who’s responsible for her not noticing the Foxes’ tension problem at first. Luna is firm in her criticism, but patient, and is willing to run the same steps by Clarke again and again, passing the ball back and forth, not afraid to push Clarke. It’s the most interactive and fun practice Clarke has had in a while, so she doesn’t pick up on the raised voices around the court for a while.

“Murphy, I _swear to god_ ,” she hears Raven roar from the other end of the court. She’s aiming her goalie’s racquet at him, and every line of her frame screams rage.

“I didn’t do anything, Reyes,” he taunts in response. “I’m just playing exy.”

“You’re playing like an _asshole_ , and you know it!” she yells, way louder than necessary, considering the distance between the two of them.

This exchange begins what Clarke learns to be the regular practice during drills.

Murphy, Clarke learns over the course of a few days, is the centre of most of the conflict, not caring who he offends or insults. Being on the striker line, most of his jibes are aimed at both Blakes, and more often than not, Clarke sees Bellamy stopping his sister from swinging at the other striker. Stopping his sister from fighting Murphy doesn’t, however, translate to Bellamy not fighting with Murphy, and more than once Lincoln and Miller jog from the other end of the court to pull the two of them apart from a near-brawl.

Other than Murphy, the upperclassmen mostly save their fights for each other. They’re the only ones who pick fights with Bellamy, likely because he hadn’t always been their team captain and they don’t have the same reverence for him the underclassmen do.

What baffles Clarke is Jasper and Monty, who she had previously pegged as the kind of kids who got bullied in high school. The two have clearly been playing with each other for years - they have what seems to be a totally non-verbal method of communication, always ducking around each other and exactly where the other needs them to be at all times. However, despite their friendship, Clarke spots them arguing with one another enough to the point that Lincoln has to step in. Their fights never reach the level of full-scale brawls that the upperclassmen’s do, mostly just elbowing and some punches thrown, but it’s still insane to Clarke, the idea that two best friends could be this hostile with each other.

This carries on all week, this tension that crackles and snaps and results in fists flying and swear words roaring. Always, Clarke stays on the fringes, not wanting to get into conflict she knows nothing about and not wanting to piss the wrong person off. Always, the Foxes leave the court as if nothing’s wrong, resuming their previous dynamic like they hadn’t spent hours glaring at each other like they were contestants in a knife fights.

And always, Clarke finds herself back in the court only a few hours after leaving, facing Bellamy Blake and his racquet and his cold stare.

Her practices with Blake all start out the same as the first one. They jog around the court, passing the ball back and forth. During their second practice, they run the drill with the cones again.

Clarke feels her skin practically crawling as Blake watches her from the sidelines, arms crossed. Her arms are sore from the day before and tired from practice all morning, but she’ll be damned if she lets Blake see any falter in her resolve. She has a shaky start, misses some cones, and she can hear Blake’s disapproving exhales of breath every time she misses.

He gets her started on another drill, the two of them tracing figures of eight around each other, again passing the ball back and forth.

Blake has quick reflexes, and he tosses the ball to her within what feels like milliseconds of her passing it to him. However, Clarke’s quicker on her feet, and gets to the ball with little trouble. She picks up the pace of her own volition, pushing Blake, trying to get him to at least break a sweat. She knows the smile of an athlete when they’ve been bested, the kind of wry, panting grin that overcomes their features without restrain. Despite Bellamy’s cold treatment of her, she wants to get him to break, to smile.

As their practices continue and the number of different drills multiplies, she tries all she can think of to get Blake to give her a different reaction that isn’t stony silence or contemptuous remarks about her background.

Yet, despite her best efforts, it’s still always like this cold blanket of contempt wraps around her the entire time her and Blake are on the court together. He never gives an inch. He doesn’t openly berate her for every small slip up, but whenever she does something right, and she looks over to him for some glimmer of approval, his face is stone. He’s exact, precise, tells her how to correct her form, but never anything more.

On Friday, she snaps.

They’re near the end of their practice session, when Blake passes her the ball and she misses it just by a split second.

She swears she hears Blake huff out a breath of laughter, before he says, “Okay, guess you’re done for the day. Same time tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she says, before her brain has a second to tell her mouth to stop talking. “What is your problem?”

Blake just looks at her, unaffected and unamused.

“I mean, okay, I get it, you think I’m stuck up or whatever. But you don’t even give me a chance to prove myself! I’m _good_ , alright? I’m not you, or Reyes, but I’m good at what I do,” she steps closer to him, aiming her racquet at him. “I wasn’t playing for a Class II team because I’m a Class II player, and if you’d just give me a _chance_ , if you trained with me without this idea you have in your head that I don’t know what I’m doing, you’d see that!”

She’s practically shaking with anger, all her balled up rage from the past week finally coming to to the fore. Every comment she bit back, every time she just kept training while he looked on disapprovingly, it all culminated to her getting _this_ close to punching him in the face.

She watches his expression change slowly, from the blank look she was so used to seeing to a tense anger. He looks away from her for a moment, and in that second she thinks he’s just going to walk away. But then he looks back at her, eyes locked and angry, and he takes a step towards her.

“You know what?” he says, voice laced with a malice she hadn’t heard before, like something snapped in him too. “You’ve got it all wrong. You think, what? The poor kid resents you because you went to a private school?”

Clarke opens her mouth, but closes it again, not sure what to say.

“The fact is, Princess,” Blake says, cornering her. “I don’t know you. My team doesn’t know you. I didn’t even - ” he pauses. “Y’know, that’s not important. My point is this - I don’t trust you. It’s not about how good you are or aren’t. You’re here because, for some reason, Kane likes you. It’s my job as captain to make sure you’re not going to bring this team down. So we’re going to train, every day, like we are now. And I want you to know that I’ll be watching you, and if I have _any_ reason to believe you’re not good for this team, you’re out. Got it?”

He’s more worked up than she’s ever seen him. She can’t think of a coherent response, nothing that makes sense comes to the forefront of her mind; all she can hear is the roar of blood in her ears.

She huffs out a breath. “You’re wrong about me, Blake,” she says finally, and walks past him to change out.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? finish a chapter with a bellarke fight? groundbreaking.  
> let me know what you liked, what you'd like to see more of, etc. i'm excited for whats to come, so don't give up on me yet


	4. pray for the wicked on the weekend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, i know!! it's been way too long. i'm so sorry. this chapter was a bitch to write, for whatever reasons. with how octavia's been in recent canon, it's been... weird to write her and clarke as friends, but we shall soldier on!
> 
> see the end of this chapter for trigger warnings!
> 
> also, serious thanks to viv, who is honestly the only reason this chapter got posted at all.

Raven’s the only one in the room when she gets back, sprawled on her back on the sofa, holding some physics book above her head. She pulls herself up onto her elbows when Clarke walks in, and makes a noise that’s half a laugh and half just a breath.

“Whoa, Griffin,” she says. “Did you run back from the Court?”

Clarke just lets her huffing and red face to answer for her, coming closer to the sofa. She gestures for her to move her legs, and just collapses next to her.

Raven leans against the side of the sofa to face her. “What, Bellamy have somewhere else to be?”

Clarke looks away from her, feeling all her anger at Blake that she thought she had ran off come crawling back like a fierce beast. “We had a disagreement,” she says, making no effort to hide her anger.

Blake was the team captain, she know they loved him. But god, he just got on her nerves.

“Seems like that’s all that goes on with you two,” Raven remarks, cocking her head . “Is that all?”

Clarke makes the mistake of looking her in the eyes, and she feels her anger turn to upset. She lets out a breath, suddenly less steady.

“He doesn’t - ” Clarke sighs, almost shaking with it. “He doesn’t think I should be on this team. He says he doesn’t trust me. And I, I can’t stand there and try _justify_ myself to him, because it’s not even about talent, it’s- ”

“Look,” Raven interrupts, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I know you don’t know us very well yet, but everyone here, they’ve all been dragged through the shit. You don’t need to explain to me what crap happened to you for Kane to decide you earned a spot on this team. You don’t owe anyone anything, especially not me. You’re a Fox. That’s enough for me. And it’ll be enough for Blake soon, too.”

Clarke leans her head back against the sofa, eyes on the ceiling. She lets out a slow breath. “I had a hard enough time proving myself to the guys on my old team. I don’t need this shit from Blake as well.”

“Trust me, I get you. Being a girl in Exy, it always feels like you have something to prove. That’s not the issue here. And you know that,” Raven says, nudging her.

“Yeah,” she admits. Blake might be a dick, but at least his problems with her are nothing to do with her being a girl, at least. Mentally, she draws up a ‘Not as big a dick as you could have been’ medal, which makes her feel slightly better.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you can trust Bellamy.” Raven continues. “Trust him, and he’ll start to trust you,”

“No promises,” Clarke just replies, and Raven laughs.

“Best of luck, then.”

Clarke repositions them so she can lay her head on Raven’s lap, ready to take a nap, and Raven just chuckles, begins carding her fingers through Clarke’s hair. As Clarke silently mourns the feeling in her feet and thighs, she can’t help but be thankful for the ease of female friendships on an exy court.

A while later, she hears noise in the hallway, and after a few moments, their suite door swings open.

“Honey, I’m home,” Luna announces in a sing-song voice. With the door open, Clarke can hear movement in the boys’ room across the hall. She pulls herself off Raven’s lap, and the older girl gets up to help Luna unpack whatever it is she’s just come home from buying.

“Are Monty and Jasper around?” Clarke asks.

Luna glances towards the door. “I think so, yeah. Octavia’s over there too, last I checked.”

“Cool,” Clarke says, heading for the door.

The door to the boys’ room is open, and when Clarke steps inside, she’s met with a room that is so Jasper and Monty, she doesn’t know how Lincoln lives there. There’s hoodies strewn all over the place, as well as empty packets of ramen and pizza boxes. If she didn’t know any better, she would not guess athletes lived here.

The boys and Octavia are playing Mario Kart, like grown ups. The set-up is a lot like the one in the girls’ room, but there’s a swivel chair in the corner of the room. Octavia looks up when she walks in.

Without any ceremony, Clarke drops herself into an empty space on the sofa. “I need to get drunk tonight,” she says, and Octavia’s grin is sharp and wicked.

That night, Clarke follows Octavia, Monty and Jasper out to Octavia’s car. Octavia’s instructions had been to “dress sexy”, and while Clarke hasn’t been given instructions like that since Halloween of her senior year in high school she thinks she measures up. She went for black, because it’s easy - a long sleeved crop top and high waisted ripped jeans. Simple, but sexy. Her trademark. Octavia’s outfit is a little more out there - a lot of leather and chains, but not in a way that makes her look too goth. Which is saying something, considering the heavy black eyeliner. Monty and Jasper have cleaned up pretty nicely too, in matching tight black shirts and jeans.

Clarke has to make a conscious effort not to let her jaw drop as they pulled up to the kerb by The Dropship. Twisting around the block and around corners is a line of men and women, all dressed primarily in black, with chains draped around torsos, chokers and collars on necks, ripped jeans and fishnet tights. Despite the chill of the evening, numbers of them are showing serious spans of skin. Clarke doesn’t even know where to look.

“Before we go,” Octavia says, and Monty holds up a finger. He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and produces four pockets of a powder Clarke doesn’t recognise. Her blood immediately runs cold. Octavia and Jasper take the pouches from Monty with a deft ease that tells Clarke that this is not the first time this has happened.

“Does Bellamy - ” she begins, but doesn’t know how to continue.

“Bellamy’s my brother, not my keeper,” Octavia says, with a glint in her eye Clarke’s not sure she trusts. She necks the powder, whatever it is, while Monty and Jasper do a mock cheers with theirs, before doing the same. She holds out a pouch to Clarke, and all she can do is shake her head. Octavia shrugs. “Your deal.”

They climb out of the cab, and despite the crawling line along the street, Octavia leads them straight to the door. Clarke tenses up as the bouncer turns to look at them, and she’s very aware of the fact that none of them are yet twenty-one. Her fears, however, seem to be pointless, as the second the bouncer lays eyes on Octavia, her face breaks into a wide smile.

“Octavia!” she says, holding the door open. Despite her expression, she’s still incredibly intimidating, all dark eye makeup and intense eyes.

“Hey, Anya,” Octavia says, all warmth. “How’ve you been?”

The bouncer - Anya, apparently - shrugs. “Same old, same old. Got into a decent fight last night, you know how it is.”

Octavia just lets out a huff of laughter. “Never change, Anya.”

Anya claps her on the shoulder, letting the four of them pass the front of the line. “Welcome back, kid,” she says as they walk past.

“Lincoln’s cousin,” Octavia explains, and all Clarke can do is nod, like it makes sense.

Stepping through the doors of The Dropship is like being enveloped in a sweaty, dark void. The sun had set outside, sure, but some light had still leaked over the horizon. But as the doors closed behind Clarke, any memory of natural light was washed from her mind. There’s a heavy fog in the air, the chalky smell of dry ice, clouding Clarke’s vision, making it difficult to spot anyone other than her three companions.

Echoing in her bones is the anonymous pounding of techno, a monotonous beat that roars in her ears. This, mixed with the swooping neon spotlights that cast shadows on everything, sparks an electricity in Clarke’s veins that she’s not sure she likes. Somehow over the din, she hears Octavia yelling about going to get drinks, and her wicked smile convinces Clarke to agree.

They push to get to the bar, navigating their way through the swaying and grinding crowd, bumping into someone with each step, contact with hot, sweaty bodies unavoidable. It wouldn’t be Clarke’s first choice for her Friday night, but there is something exciting and overwhelming about the whole thing. They get to the bar, manned by several frenzied bar staff, many of who stop to ask Octavia for their order, but she just waves them off, clearly waiting for someone.

The bartender they’re waiting for is unassuming, with light brown curls. She grins when she spots Octavia, and the two exchange words Clarke can’t make out. Octavia orders for them, pointing at all four of them, dictating their individual drinks. If Monty or Jasper have any objection to this, they don’t voice it, so Clarke resolves to do the same. The bartender vanishes, and Clarke watches as Monty and Jasper bounce to the beat of the music filling their ears. Their movements are far from graceful, but in a fun way.

The bartender returns with a tray of drinks, various shots and other vodka or rum concoctions. Octavia holds a rum and coke out to Clarke, and she doesn’t even question how she knew. Octavia gets the four of them to knock back their shots first - tequila, before leading them once again in a snake through the crowd.

Clarke hadn’t been hugely into the social scene back in Washington, and she only went out a handful of times. She had expected to feel awkward, her movements stilted; she had never been much of a dancer - but the underclassmen are so carefree, it rubs off on her. Octavia takes turns grabbing each of their hands and spinning them around, and Monty gets her to do this geeky dance that’s mostly just shimmying their shoulders.

They go back and forth for drinks a few times, enough to get her buzzed, make her smiles come more naturally and her movements more loose. Jasper slings his arm around her shoulders to get her to jump up and down to the music, and she lets out a laugh like she’s not used to.

“Having fun, Griffin?” Octavia yells over the din. Clarke can only grin in response. A song comes on that she doesn’t recognise, but clearly the other three underclassmen do, because they start a chorus of “Oh, shit!” and “Oh my god!”, followed by smacking each other on the arms. When the chorus comes on, Octavia pulls her phone out to start videoing Monty singing along dramatically to the words, and Clarke can only laugh again.

“Smile!” Octavia shouts, then, holding her phone in Clarke’s direction, catching her off guard. Her automatic reaction is to look away. Octavia doesn’t use a flash, so Clarke doesn’t know when exactly she takes the picture, but she flashes her phone screen at Clarke, shouting something Clarke can’t hear over the din. She starts gesturing to the bar, and Clarke nods. She turns to look for Monty and Jasper, which is just when some girl decides to unload the contents of her stomach onto Clarke’s shoes.

“Fuck,” the girl says, which is pretty much how Clarke feels about the situation as well.

“Are you okay?” Clarke asks her, deciding to compartmentalise the state her shoes are in. “Are your friends here?”

She never gets an answer, though, because the crowd on the dancefloor moves with an almost Herculean force, and she’s knocked to the side, sending her crashing into a couple.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Clarke says, grabbing onto a nearby pillar for support.

“Watch where the fuck you’re going,” the guy snarls, the kind of anger only prompted by way too much alcohol and trying to impress a girl. She holds her hands up in surrender, but before she can say anything, the guy beckons over a security guard - who is _not_ Octavia’s friend Anya - and whispers something in his ear.

“How much have you had to drink?” the guard asks her, and Clarke just looks at him incredulously.

“Seriously?

“How old are you?” the guard says, looking her up and down with a contempt fiercer than anything Bellamy’s ever thrown at her. “Let me see your ID,”

As if she’s floating outside her body, she watches herself reach into her purse and pull out her ID that will clearly state that she is very much underage. The guard’s grip on her arm is rough and too tight as he pulls her out of the club, pulling her from the throng of people despite all of her protests.

“My friends are in there,” she tries to say, but the guard isn’t listening.

The street is cold, and there’s a smell in the air like it might rain. She looks at her phone, turning it over in her hand. A wind blows by, and she feels goosebumps prickling on her skin. She tries Octavia’s number, but it just rings out, probably too loud in the club for her to hear. Sighing, Clarke sits on the edge of the footpath, despite any and all weird looks from the clubs coming and going patrons. She considers waiting for the club to close and for the other underclassmen to come out, but she knows that logically even then, she might miss them. She groans, and opens her phone.

* * *

Clarke looks up as a familiar car rolls in front of her. It’s started to rain, now, so her hair is beginning to frizz, and her clothes were not made to last in this kind of weather, so she looks pretty pathetic, if she’s being honest. The black sedan isn’t anything remarkable by anyone’s standards, but in the moment, it’s a miracle.

“Get in, Griffin,” calls Blake’s rough voice, and she steels herself before pulling open the passenger seat.

“Thanks,” she says as he pulls away from the club. He responds with stony silence, and she hazards another look at him. He looks a kind of gentle and soft that she’s never seen before, partly due to the fact that he’s got a worn black hoodie on, as well as a pair of flannel pyjama pants. Jesus, she pulled him out of bed for this.

_Yet, he came._ Just one more incomprehensible thing about Bellamy Blake to add to the list.

They’re stalled at a red traffic light, the haze of it blurred in the rain on the windscreen when he asks, “What happened?”

“I got thrown out,” Clarke huffs, only then remembering the vomit on her shoes. Her stomach turns over.

“What, rich party girl behaviour?” he smirks, and though he might actually trying to be playful, Clarke feels her blood boil.

“You know, you say your problem with me isn’t because I went to a private school, but I’m having trouble believing it,” she bites back. He makes a sound like she knocked some wind out of him, which she hopes she did.

“That’s fair,” he admits, which might as well be an olive branch wrapped in a bow.

“I don’t care if you like me, Bellamy,” she says, letting the remaining buzz of the alcohol that hasn’t yet faded, as well as the fact she doesn’t actually have to look him in the eye keep her steady. “But you say you want me to prove myself. I just want you to _let me.”_

She does look over at him then, just to gauge his reaction. His eyes are on the road, but there’s something different in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. She doesn’t recognise it, but can’t help feelings it might be that vaguely resembles respect. She doesn’t want to get any hopes up.

“Alright. On Sunday, though. There’s no way you’ll be a competent Exy player tomorrow,”

She nearly smiles at that, but stops herself, and keeps her eyes ahead of her as the speed back to campus.

* * *

 

When Clarke wakes up the following morning, for a few seconds, she thinks she doesn’t have a hangover. She rolls over to check the time, and is immediately hit with the roaring waves of a headache, followed by an uneasiness in her stomach. She bolts for the bathroom.

After an ungraceful and unforgettable fifteen minutes emptying her guts into the toilet, she wanders into the living room, where she finds Raven and Octavia. Raven, engrossed in _something_ on her laptop, just raises her coffee in greeting.

Octavia is looking at her with total concern, “Hey, where did you go last night? We couldn’t find you when we were leaving the club, are you okay?”

Clarke has a brief moment where she thinks back to the conversation she just had with god on the big white telephone. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. I couldn’t find you guys, and … something happened, so I decided to just go back to Ark.”

“What happened? Wait, how did you get back to Ark?”

She pauses. “Bellamy picked me up.”

It’s not a stretch to say that Octavia’s jaw drops. “Bellamy? Our Bellamy?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t happy about it, but he was the only one who answered his phone,”

Octavia winces. “I’m sorry. We got a cab back, but it was way after we lost you. That reminds me, I have to go pick up my car soon.”

Clarke shrugs. “It’s all good,”

Octavia smiles, and returns to her bowl of cereal. As Clarke gets her breakfast together, she runs though events of the previous night in her head. She smiles to herself thinking of the time of the dancefloor with the other underclassmen, winces when she remembers the vomit on her shoes, internally cringes when she thinks about the phonecall to Bellamy. And then -

An image pops into her head, of Monty, Jasper and Octavia knocking back pouches of something she didn’t recognise in Octavia’s car. Clarke’s not an idiot, people do drugs in college all the time. Back in Washington, it wasn’t a party unless somebody was on something. But still, it doesn’t sit right with her.

She sits down for breakfast with the two girls, and then waits for Octavia to leave to go pick up her car.

Clarke knocks on Monty and Jasper’s door. When she pushes it open, she finds the two of them in a near vegetative state on the sofa, watching _Spirited Away_.

“Hey, Clarke,” Monty says, his voice groggy.

“Hey, guys,” she says, dropping into the swivel chair. “Can I talk to you? About last night?”

The two boys pull themselves into more upright positions, physically steeling themselves for whatever’s to come.

“You - you guys are serious athletes. What was that, with the drugs?”

Monty and Jasper exchange a look, furtive glances like they’d been caught smoking in the boys’ toilets by the principal.

“It’s chalk, basically watered down crack,” Jasper says, a resilience in his voice Clarke doesn’t understand.

“We got into it for Octavia’s sake,” Monty adds. Clarke furrows her brow.

“Octavia? How? She’s only been on the team as long as I have.”

“C’mon Clarke, you know she’s been hanging around the team for longer than that. It’s - complicated,”

Clarke thinks about the track marks on her inner arm that Octavia makes no effort to conceal. “Complicated,” she says, with a raise of her eyebrow.

Monty sighs. “Bellamy doesn’t know,”

“And he _can’t,”_ Jasper says. “It would - well, I don’t know what would happen.”

“You guys are going to have to start being a lot less cryptic and start explaining shit in a way that makes sense,” she says.

Jasper looks to Monty, who just looks around the room, as if searching for the best way to begin. “You know Bellamy was in juvie, right?”

“Yeah, for what? Two years?”

“Just a little over that, yeah. You know why?”

Clarke shakes her head.

Jasper and Monty look at each other again, like their bond could have been broken in the last ten seconds. “Well, none of us really know the whole story, but from what we know - ”

Jasper picks up immediately. “The Blakes were living in shitty foster care for like, years, and, I don’t know, one time, the foster parents were so shitty the Bellamy ended up beating one of them half to death. Boom. Juvie for two years.”

“Jesus Christ,” Clarke says. She knew, of course, that Bellamy supposedly had ‘violent tendencies’, that he’d spent time in juvie, but knowing it in the abstract and the concrete are two very different things. She thinks of Bellamy as she’s seen him with his teammates - firm, but kind, and struggles to align it with the Bellamy Monty and Jasper are telling her about now.

“Yeah,” Monty says.

“But what does that have to do with Octavia?”

“Basically,” Monty begins. “Octavia was just… put back into the foster care system. And she got mixed up in some shit. She doesn’t like to talk about it. But one time - ”

“Octavia’s one of our best friends. You can’t tell her we told you this,” Jasper interrupts. Clarke nods, slowly. Her heart is in her throat, and she’s not sure she actually wants to hear what they have to say.

“We were watching this documentary for one of my classes, on this Ukrainian priest, all three of us. He deals with all these kids who lived on the streets, living in sewers, under abandoned vans and stuff. And there’s one part in the movie where they deal with these kids who’ve been forced to take drugs, who become drug addicts cause dealers inject them with heroin. It’s dark, really unsettling, and at one point I look over at Octavia,” Monty swallows. “And she’s got this look in her eye, like she’s fighting back tears,”

Clarke lets out a slow breath. “The track marks on her arms,”

Monty and Jasper both nod at her. “I don’t know her whole story, but she’s basically been sober ever since Bellamy got out of juvie,”

“Basically,” Clarke says, not forgetting the pouches the three of them had the night before.

Monty grimaces. “I know it looks bad, but chalk is a way to keep her from relapsing. I know that it’s cheating, technically, but it’s something, y’know? She’s good, stable, most of the time, and she can play. She can play well. If Bellamy found out - ”

“He’d kill _us,_ first of all.”

“I won’t say anything,” she says, though a rock settles in the pit of her stomach. “When did you guys start taking it?”

Jasper shrugs. “About a year ago? We’d take it before nights out, just for a bit of a buzz, and a few months in, after we’d met everyone, Octavia asked if she could try it.”

“We’re not exactly role models,” Monty admits, and Clarke smiles.

Keeping a secret from the captain - about his _little sister_ \- won’t be easy, she knows. She also knows that she’s antagonised him enough, and does _not_ want to deal with this fight as well as every single other one they’ve had. So much for getting to prove herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: drug use, referenced abuse (sorta), referenced violence.
> 
> i know nothing about drugs, so any facts in this that are wrong - pls don't be surprised. 
> 
> the documentary monty talks about is called Almost Holy, about Pastor Gennadiy Mokhnenko. it's a great documentary, but pretty dark and upsetting, so not for the faint of heart.
> 
> again, so sorry this took so long. i'll try to be better! also, this chapter was a lot less bellarke centric than i planned, but sometimes things run away from you.


	5. it's not the waking, it's the rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i watched a bellarke video on youtube earlier that was my inspiration to finish this chapter so shoutout to youtube user TeamHodgins you a real one
> 
> i do want it to be known that no matter how long i leave it between chapters, i am always coming back to this fic, so please don't feel concerned that i've abandoned it - i have not.

“Again, Griffin!”

A rattle goes through Clarke’s wrists as she intercepts a pass from Bellamy. On Saturday, she hadn’t been sure that Bellamy would remember his promise to give her a chance to prove herself on the court, but, sure enough, she was woken up on Sunday morning by the captain rapping on the door to the suite.

After over an hour of it, though, she was close to regretting it. Not only, of course, because every second she spends looking at her captain, she is reminded of the Big Secret she knows about him, about his sister. She doesn’t like keeping secrets, but she knows she has to. Besides, she’s too busy to have a heart-to-heart at the moment.

Bellamy has her standing with her back to him, and alternately shouted directions at her, hurling the balls with lethal force. She didn’t know her elbows could hurt like this.

“Right!” Bellamy shouts, and she turns, just about clutching the ball out of the air in time. She twists around, as instructed, and fires it at the opposite wall.

The ball ricochets off the wall. “No, no,”

She turns around to face Bellamy as he walks toward her, his footsteps echoing throughout the court. His helmet is on, but she can still see the frustrated set of his jaw, an impatience in his eye.

“You’re turning wrong,” he grunts. She just raises an eyebrow at him. He groans. “You’re a college Exy player, I shouldn’t have to teach you this. Okay, look.” He takes his racquet in his hands to demonstrate. “You’re turning from your waist, see?” he accompanies this with a demonstration, twisting from his torso only. “You need to turn from your knees,” he then demonstrates by spreading out his stance and turning from his legs. “Better for your spine, and it gives you more force.”

Clarke nods, fixing her grip on her racquet. “Alright, I’ll try it,”

“Good,” Bellamy says, jogging back to where the balls are. She turns her back to him again, waits for him to call out to her. “Left!”

They run it a few times before Bellamy stops again.

He walks back over to her. “You’re too stiff,” he says. “Okay, get in position.”

She follows his instruction, trying to keep her questions as to where this is going to herself. She feels a warmth behind her, Bellamy’s presence almost overwhelming. He’s the kind of guy that commands recognition wherever he goes, just radiating a demand for attention. This close, she can’t help but be aware of every inch of space between them. Her jaw clenches as he puts his hands on her hips - feather light, just a nudge. “You need to be lower.” He then puts his hand on the small of her back, turning her slightly, and she adjusts accordingly.

Bellamy clears his throat, moving away. She feels the absence almost immediately. “Yeah, like that. Let’s try again.”

Being that close to a teammate isn’t irregular. It’s normal, Clarke knows. Between end of game group hugs and living in such close quarters, personal space tends to disappear between a team. But the contempt Bellamy holds her in, there was too much tension there, and honestly, she’d like to avoid having to deal with that again.

When Bellamy’s sick of correcting her, they run drills, just the two of them running up and down the court, darting around each other, passing back and forth. Bellamy tries some of his new techniques on her, passing to her while she’s mid-turn, but she gets it each time. She has to fight to keep a grin from her face, because there’s no way she’ll let Bellamy know that she’s actually enjoying this.

She takes a shot at the goal, sees the ball whiz through the air and slam against the wall, sees the goal light up in red. And that feeling - the blood racing through her veins, the breath catching in her throat, adrenalin pumping - there’s nothing like it in the world. Her joints ache, and her feet are whining at her, and all of Bellamy’s criticisms are still running through her head, but it’s all worth it. Playing Exy with a Class I team. She wishes she could catch this feeling and bottle it. She can only imagine how she’ll feel during the actual games.

“Griffin,” Bellamy calls. He’s pulled his helmet off, and has his racket poised against his shoulder, like he’s just walked out of Exy Weekly or something. He’s looking at her with eyebrows raised, like he’s waiting for an explanation. “You good to go?”

She clears her throat. “Yeah, yeah.”

* * *

 

After a gruelling - and kind of weird - practice, Clarke relishes in the comfort of a hot shower back in the dorms. She closes her eyes and tries to let the water scald any thoughts of Bellamy Blake out of her mind, any thoughts of Exy at all. There is no world outside. Only the steam of the shower.

This lasts approximately five minutes.

“How was practice?” Octavia asks her as she towels through her hair.

Clarke shrugs. “Same old, same old I guess. Pretty sure your brother still hates me and is convinced I’m going to bring the team down, but I’m living with it.”

“Clarke,” Octavia says, and she gets this expression, all eyebrows and seriousness that Clarke doesn’t really recognise. “Do you know anything about the Foxes before Bell joined?”

Clarke shrugs again. When she was coming through high school, the only collegiate Exy teams of note she heard of were University of Polis, USC and maybe the DC team.

“Basically, we were this scrappy, good-for-nothing team that barely earned its place as a Class I team. Since Bell became captain, he’s started taking that personally, I guess. He wants us to do well this year, more than Kane does, more than anyone else, I think,” Clarke nearly smiles, because of course Bellamy would make something like that his own personal mission.

Octavia gestures to her then. “And here you are, this sophomore he knows nothing about. You know the captain of the Foxes usually gets to help select recruits? Kane wouldn’t even let him look at your file. I think he’s waiting for the catch, or like, you to reveal your amazing skills as an offensive dealer,”

“I am an amazing offensive dealer!” she can’t help but argue, and Octavia just laughs.

“I think you’re going to be fine,” she says, then: “Oh, shit, totally unrelated, how do you feel about this going up on the ‘gram?”

“The gram?” Clarke asks.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “Instagram. I know you’re only a year older than me, you can stop acting like an old lady any day now.” She pulls her phone out of her pocket and turns the screen to Clarke, showing her a picture that must have been taken the other night.

The picture is blurry, obviously because Octavia was far from sober when she took it. The light behind Clarke’s a glowing purple, some spotlight caught just behind her head in the right moment, lighting up flyaway strands of her hair like a halo. She’s not looking at the camera, her smile is self-conscious, but there’s real happiness in her eyes.

“Yeah, you can post it,” she says, unsure what to do with the emotions settling in her stomach.

“Yeah? Great. Pity the night went so shit after that, though,” Octavia comments, and Clarke can’t help but laugh. She watches over Octavia’s shoulder as she flicks through her instagram, finding the right filter for it. Clarke deleted her instagram before coming to college in her first year, not wanting to deal with her family - or, her mother, rather, being able to check in on her.

“Our newest offensive dealer letting loose,” Octavia dictates as she types it in. “Fox emoji, fox emoji, hashtag ArkU, hashtag foxes, hashtag ArkUFoxes. And… there.”

“Beautiful,” Clarke says, dry, and Octavia snorts.

“C’mon,” she says. “I think we have company.”

Clarke pads into the living room after Octavia, where Luna, Raven and Monty are sprawled on different surfaces.

“Oh yeah, I got a concussion in junior year of high school,” Monty is saying. Despite being made up of mostly bone and lean muscle, he’s taking up the whole couch, legs hanging over the top. “Nothing bad though, just out of commission for a few days,”

“Remember when Bellamy nearly tore a ligament two years ago?” Luna says. “He almost did permanent damage ‘cause he didn’t want to let Kane down,”

“What are you guys talking about?” Clarke asks, sitting on the floor by Raven’s feet.

“Comparing sports injuries,” Monty says. “Got any juicy stories?”

“I chipped my scaphoid one time,” Octavia says, nudging Monty to get him to shove over. “Hurt like a bitch. Plus, no one knows what a scaphoid is, so everyone just thought I sprained my wrist.”

“Honestly, I think I win, what with the permanently fucked up knee, and all,” Raven says.

“I don’t know about that one, babe,” Luna says. “One time I saw a guy dislocate his elbow. Shit was gross.”

Raven and Monty shudder.

“Oh yeah,” Clarke sits up. “Back when I was in pre-med, I saw a guy’s knee bent the entirely wrong way, like, sideways.” She gets up to demonstrate, trying to show her knee bending inward towards her other one. Raven audibly gags, but Monty’s just looking at her, thoughtful.

“You were pre-med?” he asks, and Clarke feels her whole body freeze.

“Y- yeah, for the first month or so of my freshman year in Washington. I changed my major halfway through the semester, though,” she shrugs, sitting back down.  
Luna raises her eyebrows. “And you got to see injuries like that in the first month?”

Clarke swallows, feeling the immediate need to backtrack crawling up on her. “Well, I mean, in books, yeah,”

“Does it count if you didn’t see it in real life?” Monty poses this question to Raven, who ponders for a moment.

She scrunches her nose. “Yeah, I’d say so. What about now?” she asks then, nudging her with her foot. Clarke just raises her eyebrows. “What are you majoring in?”

Clarke shrugs. “Art, maybe? Or Art History? I haven’t really decided,”

Monty looks at her in horror. “But you’re a sophomore,”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?” she asks, feeling a little defensive. “What are you majoring in?”  
“Computer science,” he says.

“Well, what about you, Luna?”

“Marine biology,” Raven answers “She’s gonna save the oceans and shit.”

Luna lets out a short laugh. “Well, I’m gonna try.”

“Shit,” Clarke says, half in awe, half embarrassed.

“You have no plans for the future or anything?” Luna asks her.

She shrugs. “I just want to play Exy,”

This elicits a roar of laughter from her teammates, which at least means she doesn’t have to elaborate.

* * *

For the first time in a long time, that night she dreams about her parents.

She doesn’t know where she is at first, is convinced that she’s back in Washington. After all, Jaha is there, looking at her with sad yet stern eyes.

But she’s in her dark blue Alpha uniform, and from further inspection, she sees that she’s back in high school. She has an Exy racquet in her hand, though there’s no sign of any other Exy equipment around her.

She doesn’t ask why she has to carry the racquet to the principal’s office, because every other student she passes is also carrying their Exy racquets. The lights overhead are on, but the corridor is coated with unbreakable darkness. When they’re in the principal’s office - there is no going, no clear transition, they just go from being in the hallway to not, Clarke’s parents are sitting behind her.

She doesn’t turn to see them, but nonetheless, she can. Her mother is dressed smart, in a dark suit jacket and modest-length skirt. She is smiling. Her father is in his coach’s hat, his posture relaxed as he leans back in his chair. Clarke doesn’t question why Jaha is the principal - it just makes sense.

“You’re a very promising player, Clarke,” Jaha is saying, and Clarke recognises this, though it wasn’t in school, and her father wasn’t there, and her mother wasn’t smiling. “I think you could find a good home in Washington,”

Abby’s voice cuts through the room. “Clarke is going to play at Mount Weather,” she says, and Clarke recognises that too, but they don’t go together, like someone glued two separate reams of film together, creating a mishmash in her brain.

Clarke turns to her dad, wanting to hear his opinion, hear his voice, but he just ruffles a hand through his hair, grinning at the situation.

Even Clarke’s subconscious knows he doesn’t fit in this conversation.

“I’m going to play for the Ark U Foxes,” Clarke says, soft, trying out her voice.

Her mother doesn’t hear her. “She’ll be offensive dealer, and in her junior year, she’ll be captain, just like Jake was. That’s how we met, you know,” Dream-Abby says, and Clarke knows, has seen the photos, but she can’t remember what they look like for the life of her.

“I’m not playing for Mount Weather,” Clarke says, but no one hears her. “I’m playing for the Foxes.”

Her mom keeps talking, and her dad keeps nodding. “I’m playing for the Foxes,” Clarke repeats. “I’m playing for the Foxes. I’m playing for the - ”

“Clarke!”

She’s shocked out of her dream by someone shaking her shoulder. Raven is fully dressed, in a loose tank top and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, as always. She’s sitting on the edge of Clarke’s bed, concern faintly lining her face.

“Hey,” Clarke says, voice still groggy. She pulls herself onto her elbows, trying to suppress the heavy feeling in her stomach from the images of her parents. “What’s up?”

“We have the team breakfast, remember? I said I’d wake you up in case you forgot.”

Clarke blinks at her. “No, I didn’t forget, I just thought I’d have woken up on time. How long do I have?”

Raven smirks and stands up. “We leave in fifteen.”

Clarke swings out her legs so she’s sitting on the edge of her bed. Every second she’s wake, her dream slips from her memory, but there’s a hollowness in her stomach left by seeing her parents, even in warped dream form. She swallows it down and gets ready for - whatever it is Raven woke her up to go to.

“It’s an annual tradition,” Luna explains when they’re in Raven’s car. She’s twisted around in the front seat to face Clarke and Octavia in the back. “The Monday before classes start, we all get together and eat our weight in greasy breakfast foods,”

“Ugh, please do not remind me,” Octavia groans. “I literally came to Ark U to play Exy, I don’t see why I have to take classes on top of that,”

“It is a _university,_ Octavia,” Raven says, her voice sounding eerily Bellamy-like.

“She only doesn’t care because she’s studying engineering and is like, a mega-genius,” Octavia stage-whispers to Clarke conspiratorially. Clarke can see a glint of Raven’s grin in the rearview mirror.

“Anyway,” Luna interrupts. “It’s all going on Kane’s credit card, so please, make sure to order way more than you’ll be able to finish.”

“It used to be the captain’s bill to pay, but Blake managed to swindle his way out of that one,” Raven adds, pulling into the parking lot of The Skybox. “Bastard. And, don’t forget that we have to go meet to the court to meet Kane after this.”

“Exy season’s here, bitches!” Octavia cheers, opening her door.

Clarke’s admittedly a little surprised to see the whole team there, all the upper and underclassmen. Murphy is sandwiched between Lincoln and Miller, probably as barriers. Next to Miller, Monty and Jasper are throwing something into each other’s mouths - Clarke can’t tell what - and doing some weird self-five each time they get something in. Instead of being annoyed, like Clarke would expect, Miller is watching the pair with something that probably passes for amusement - she doesn’t know him well enough to be sure.

As she follows the girls in, Clarke makes eye contact with Bellamy, and he nods at her, short and curt. A step up from a glare, probably. When the rest of the team spot them arriving, they’re greeted with a chorus of jeers and applause. They take their seats, and Clarke ends up between Bellamy and Raven.

“Sorry for the delay,” Raven says. “Someone decided to get a little beauty rest,”

Clarke just elbows her.

“Whatever,” Jasper says. “Now that you’re here, we can order.”

He waves over a server, and then commences the most complicated flurry of ordering Clarke’s ever witnessed. None of them are holding menus, but they all know exactly what they want, complicated orders with sides Clarke hasn’t even heard of, every dish a weird reference to a gangster movie, or something.

“Clarke, you should get the Don Carleone,” Monty says once he orders.

“You’re just saying that so you can steal a sausage,” Jasper interjects. “Get ‘The Day My Daughter is to be Married’, that seems more your style,”

“Ugh, no,” Raven says, and then, to the server, “Two ‘Tony Montana’s, please,”

Clarke just shakes her head.

It takes a few minutes for the chaos of ordering to settle down, for everyone to stop heckling each other over their choices and for peace to (somewhat) return.

“So, Clarke,” Miller says. “How’s training with Bellamy going? Our captain being a hard ass on you?”

“Miller,” Bellamy warns from beside her. Miller says nothing, doesn’t even acknowledge his captain, just raises his eyebrows at Clarke.

She swallows. “Well, I mean, there’s been no bloodshed yet, so that’s a good sign, right?”

This prompts a bark of laughter from Miller, and Murphy, surprisingly, next to him, appears to smirk. She doesn’t risk looking at Bellamy.

“That’s just ‘cause you’re wearing helmets and he’s not allowed go for the face,” Murphy says, and Clarke can’t help smile, just a little.

“Bellamy?”

“She’ll do,” he says, and it feels like glowing praise. For risk of poking the bear, she doesn’t comment on that.

Instead, she focuses on the hulking backliner sitting to Miller’s left. “So, Lincoln, Octavia mentioned that you’re an art major. What’s the department like?”

If anyone notices her entirely unsubtle change in topic, they don’t say anything, but Clarke doesn’t miss the look Bellamy shoots Octavia at Clarke’s question.

Luckily for them, it doesn’t take long for their food to arrive. If Clarke was less hungry, she would have been amused at the bloody chaos that ensues. No one can eat like athletes can. The Foxes tear into their breakfast like a pack of bloodthirsty wolves, the table entirely silent but for the sounds of eating. As they finish up, little dribs and drabs of conversation continue, but it mostly just comments on the upcoming year.

“Honestly, I swear, I’ve been bulking up. I know these little arms may not look like much, but I’ll be right there in the brawls this year,” Jasper promises, mouth still full of waffle.

Murphy scoffs. “You say this like you’re not already brawling. Dude, I already have bruises on my legs from you brawling this year, asshole. Bulking up just means you might actually win some fights instead of getting knocked out like you did in April.”

“Murphy,” Bellamy warns. “Play nice,”

Jasper doesn’t say anything.

Once their plates have been cleared and things have quieted down, Clarke turns to Luna, though she’s posing her question to the whole team.

“So - I couldn’t actually find out. What happened to your old offensive dealer? I know Octavia’s here because the other striker - Roan Winter, right? - graduated, but I couldn’t find anything out about Finn Collins, other than he left Ark U.”

Luna doesn’t answer, but Monty snorts, and across from him, Jasper chokes on his drink.

“Well, uh.” Monty glances at Raven. “Finn realised that Exy wasn’t really for him.”

Clarke turns to him, puzzled. “But he was playing for a Class I team. How does someone just change their mind like that?”

Monty just looks over at Raven, who’s taking a sip of her coffee without making eye contact with anyone. When Clarke scans the table, all her teammates are looking either away or at their plates.

“Finn thought,” Raven says, finally, with her eyes fixed at some point past Lincoln’s shoulder, “That if he hooked up with girls from other Exy teams at away games that his _fiancée_ and _teammate_ wouldn’t be able to find out,”

“Also that said fiancée wouldn’t beat his ass three ways to Sunday when she did find out,” Jasper adds, safe on the opposite side of the table from a firm kick to the ankle.

“Raven,” Clarke says, barely a word and more a breath.

“It’s history,” Raven says before she can say any more. She says it with the conviction of someone willing it into existence. “Besides, I speak the vagina monologues these days,”

She says this while looking sidelong at Luna, who just drops her gaze to the table. Clarke bites her lip on a smile.

After a few moments, Jasper pipes up again. “Now, after that horrendously awkward encounter: Who wants to start placing bets on the season?”

Murphy’s ensuing grin can only be described as wolfish. “Oh, hell yeah. I _know_ there’s some Polis asshole ready to try get his revenge,”

When they finally clear out of the diner, they all pile into their cars and head to the Court to meet with Kane about the upcoming season. The girls’ trip is mostly dominated by Raven and Octavia bickering over some betting technicality that Clarke can’t be bothered to really listen to.

The parking lot of the Court is empty when the arrive, three cars swinging haphazardly into parking spaces. They travelled according to their rooms, Clarke notices, with Jasper and Monty hopping out of Lincoln’s comically small, beat up sedan and Murphy and Miller climbing out of Bellamy’s car. They all troop into the building one after another.

Kane is waiting for them in the reception area of the Court. A clipboard is clutched between his fingers, and he looks tired, but Kane always looks tired. As each of them file in, with a chorus of “Morning, Coach,”, he ticks them off a list. Clarke takes a seat on the sofa between Octavia and Monty, directly facing Kane. There’s a brief mumble of conversation, but it all dies down when Kane clears his throat.

“First thing’s first,” Kane says. “Practice will now be at six in the morning, every goddamn day, because, as you all know, our first game is this Friday.”

His voice fills every corner of the room. Clarke feels an electricity crackle through the air as her teammates cheer, feels a tightening in her chest and a magic kind of excitement. She clutches her hands together to stop them from shaking.

A flicker of a smile tugs at the corner of Kane’s mouth as he waits for them to quieten down. “Second: According to ERC rules, because it’s our first game of the season, we have to announce our line up a few days in advance. That means,” he says, turning to Clarke and Octavia. “That this will be the first official announcement of you two joining the team,”

“So Octavia’s Instagram post doesn’t count?” Monty pipes up.

Octavia rolls her eyes. “My account’s on private, dumbass,”

Kane doesn’t look impressed. “Since, thankfully, most Exy media doesn’t care about the contents of Octavia Blake’s instagram account, the media circus will be saved for Wednesday or Thursday.”

This is met with wide groans from the team, but Clarke just feels herself freezing up.

“Media circus?” Clarke asks “Do people even care that much about collegiate Exy?”

Octavia nudges her. “C’mon Clarke, you say that like you didn’t know who Bellamy and Raven were before even transferring,”

“That’s ‘cause they’re _Bellamy and Raven,”_ Clarke says, refusing to acknowledge the blush creeping on her cheeks. She knows Raven is grinning at her from the armchair beside her, but doesn’t even want to think about what Bellamy looks like. “Two of the most talented members of the team. No offense,” she says, looking at the rest of them. “Why would they care about the two newest recruits?”

Kane answers her. “Well, you’re a transfer from a Class II team. They’re going to be curious about you, about your talents. About what made it worth it to recruit you.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Murphy mutters. Miller elbows him, but Kane just breezes past the comment.

“And Octavia is a legacy, she’s the captain’s little sister. She has a lot to live up to,”

“Gee, no pressure, Coach,” Octavia says, with no edge to her voice.

“Don’t stress about it, Blake the Younger,” Miller reassures her. “The press just wants to see if you’re gonna clock a journo like your big brother over here,”

“I remember that,” Murphy says, sitting forward. this boney little freshman just popping one straight in that journo’s face. Pure excellence.”

“I was a sophomore, dumbass,” Bellamy says, elbowing him. “Stop reminding everyone that you had to repeat junior year like a million times ‘cause you kept failing,”

“It was only once!” Murphy protests.

“No way, man, you were a junior when I was a freshman, so that means - ”

“Coach,” Clarke says, while her teammates seem busy arguing over Murphy’s real age. “Is this media coverage gonna be national?”

“In all likelihoods, it will be,” Kane says. He fixes her in his gaze, like he could read her worries and concerns just from looking at her. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Clarke’s dream flashes in her memory. “No, coach.”

Kane nods, once, and it feels like a judge banging a gavel. He claps his hands to get everyone’s attention again.

“On that - the lineup for Friday’s game. Starters: Murphy, Bellamy, Luna, Lincoln, Jasper, Miller. Three subs each half, so none of you have to play a full half in a row except for the goalies. And I swear to God, if I see any of you asswipes throwing a punch I’m benching you for the next three games. Am I clear?”  
“Yes, Coach,” comes the reply, but Monty nudges Clarke.

“We’re the smallest team in the NCAA,” he whispers. “Kane can’t afford to bench one of us for three games ‘cause the team would fall apart,”

“And don’t forget - if you haven’t seen Nyko for your physical, go see him. You’re not playing if I don’t have a report from him that you’re well and healthy,” Kane continues. Monty raises his eyebrows at Clarke. “Now, get out of here.”

There are some grumbles about having to come all the way to the court for such a short meeting, but the reception area clears out pretty quickly. Clarke gets up to head back to the girls’ car.

“Griffin,” a gruff voice calls from behind her as she’s following Raven. She turns to see Bellamy, standing further back in the corridor. He gestures for her to come back.

“I’ll see you back at the dorms, guys!” she calls over her shoulder, before following Bellamy back into the reception area. He doesn’t sit down, so neither does she. She stands there for a moment, watching him as he works his jaw, trying to figure out what he’s going to say. She thinks, for a second, about Octavia, about the chalk - and then about the warmth of his body behind hers the day before at practice. She digs her nails into her palms to try stop herself from blushing.

“What was that, earlier, about the media?” he finally asks.

She hadn’t thought anyone had noticed that. “It’s - it’s nothing,”

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, with a short sigh, and she can almost see him shift into Captain Mode. “As captain, it’s important that I know what’s going on with my players. If there’s some kind of problem going on with you, I should know about it, so we can handle it. As a team,”

“As a team,” she repeats softly.

“You asked me to let you prove yourself, you want me to trust you. So now I’m asking you to trust me,” he says, voice firm and strong, before added, a little belatedly, “As your captain.”

His jaw is set, his gaze is steady. He wants her to believe him - hell, she wants to believe him. She can’t tell him everything, but she can give him half-truths, at least for now.

“My parents never wanted me playing exy. When I went to Washington after my senior year, they basically cut me off, cut all ties. They said I’d never amount to anything, if I didn’t do what they had planned for me. The reason I freaked out about the media is because I don’t want my family to see that I’ve got some success, all of a sudden, and then try and act like they supported me the whole time.”

Here’s what she doesn’t say - her father was killed. The murderer walks free, and she has her mother and exy to thank for it. She only loved one of those things enough to forgive it.

“Is that it?” Bellamy says.

She grimaces. “It’s a bit more complicated, but yeah, that’s the gist.”

He’s quiet for a few moments. She can almost hear the gears in his head turning.

“If you need to be kept out of the spotlight, we can help you. I can’t promise you’ll be entirely hidden from the press, but we can try shift their focus from you as much as possible. It’ll only be for a few days, anyway, before they flock to some other scandal or jumped up high school student. I don’t like you all that much, and you may not like me Clarke, but the way I see it is this: we have our first game this Friday. That means we’re officially a team, so I’m officially on your side.”

She thinks about what Monty said, about Octavia being basically sober since Bellamy got out of juvie. She thinks about the Bellamy that nearly beat one of his foster parents to death to defend his sister. She thinks about the Bellamy Blake who was - is - so protective of his team that he treated her with open hostility.

He looks at her with those steady eyes again. “What do you say?”

She thinks about what it would be like to have that Bellamy on her side. She still doesn’t know if she likes him, with him criticising her every move in practice and barely deigning to talk to her outside of it, and he’s just admitted to not liking her - but being on the same side? She could live with that. Would love it, in fact.

“Deal,” she says, and her words echo another deal, a more hostile one, made in the same building. Bellamy doesn’t smile, but the tug at the edge of his lips is something close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am playing fast and loose with drills, with ERC rules, you name it. i don't care about sports accuracy. also, google does not want to recognise dislocate as a word, which begs the question - is it a word at all? i care not. 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr @neiljostensmh


	6. does it smell like a school gymnasium in here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas! i had some time today between family stuff so i thought i'd get this up. finally, the first game of the season! hope u enjoy x

Thursday, the first day of classes, is rough. Not just because it’s her first day of Actual Real College, her first day spending time with people who aren’t the Foxes since coming to Ark U, but because she feels like she constantly has to look over her shoulder. She knows Kane released the season’s line up the night before, and can’t help but feel like there’s going to be a reporter around every corner, asking her what Marcus Kane did to convince her to come to Ark U. 

As it’s the first day, and because it’s Ark U tradition, nearly the entire student body is a sea of orange when Clarke heads to her classes in the morning. Everyone, freshman or senior, is enthusiastic to show their Fox Spirit, but Clarke opts out, hoping to go unnoticed for one day longer.

She can barely focus in her classes, keeps wanting to take her phone out and check the news stories for any mention of the Foxes’ newest recruits. Her heartbeat races at the idea of her name plastered all over the place. At least collegiate Exy is a somewhat niche area. 

Some of her non-major requirements classes are pretty dull, but at least her Art History 204 class is interesting. The professor has the flowing grace of a hippie-type, but a certain severity in her voice that Clarke likes. If she needs to get good grades to stay on the Exy team, this class is probably what’ll save her. 

Still, she finds herself counting down the seconds until her last class ends and she can head to her room to get ready before afternoon practice. She’s itching to get on the court again. Tomorrow they’ll be playing the Eligius Jackals in the Foxhole Court, their first game of the season. Every atom of her is ready to try out what she’s been learning with the Foxes since the beginning of summer practice.

When she does get around to reading them, she finds that all the articles featuring her or Octavia’s names seemed to err on the side of cautious optimism, one even citing her as the best player on her last team. Some, of course, questioned Kane’s judgement in bringing a sophomore from a Class II team in, but that was expected. Still, Bellamy stays true to his word about keeping the media circus off her back, and all day he or the other upperclassmen are there to steer her from class to class, making sure no one caught too long a glance at their latest offensive dealer. Which is handy, considering the fact that the whole team has to wear their jerseys on game day, meaning Clarke stands out like a beacon, a shock of bright orange.

Luna and Raven are there to pick her up from her biology class, stationing themselves at either side of her to bring her to the athlete’s dining hall, where at least they wouldn’t stick out as badly. Monty joins them as if from thin air, nattering at them about having saved a table. Once they have their food, Clarke sits down, relieved.

“So,” Luna says, slotting in across from her. “First game tonight. You excited?”

Clarke swallows, hoping the nervousness she’s been carrying around with her for the last few days isn’t obvious. “Definitely. I can’t wait to be back on the court,”

“You were on the court yesterday,” Monty says, amused. 

She waves her hand. “You know what I mean.” Being on campus the day before and today, with the oceans of orange and the buzz of the crowds just gave her a small taste of how it would be in the stadium that night, where her energy could feed off theirs. “Anyway - Eligius. What are they like?”

“Mean sons of bitches,” Raven says. “They have a huge lineup, so they can burn through players easy.”

“They hold the record for most red-cards received by any team in the south-eastern district,” Luna explains. “They observe the rules on violence in exy, but they don’t always adhere to them.”

“Last year, McCreary, this absolute bastard of a player, nearly broke Lincoln’s jaw with his racquet.  _ Lincoln.”  _ Raven continues, her words doing nothing to settle the nerves in Clarke’s stomach.

“We’re in for a rough night, then,” she says.

“Their star player transferred to USC this year though, so we won’t have to deal with his ass,” Monty adds as consolation.

“Though it was a nice ass. Godspeed, Zeke Shaw, may SoCal treat you well,” Raven says, holding her water out as if toasting someone. Luna bumps her with her shoulder.

“Hi, Raven, it’s your girlfriend, remember me?”

Raven rolls her eyes. “Babe, c’mon, as if something so shallow as a man’s ass could tear me away from you. Besides, I’ve already agreed to go to the autumn banquet with you, I can’t pull out of the relationship now.”

“The what?” Clarke says.

“The autumn banquet,” Raven says. “To kick off the Exy season. It’s held every year. You seriously didn’t know?”

Clarke shakes her head.

“Well, it’s fun,” Luna says. “A bit dry at times, but as long as no one starts a fight, they’re good.”

“What? The fights are the best parts!” Raven says, and her girlfriend just rolls her eyes.

“What sucks is that dates are like, mandatory,” Monty says. “Everyone brings someone,”

“Yeah, even Murphy has a date,” Raven says.

“Murphy? Who?” Clarke asks incredulously.

“Believe it or not, Miller said it was some girl who robbed him, who he fell like, immediately in love with,” Monty says, gesturing with one hand.

“Oh, Miller said this, did he?” Raven asks, waggling her eyebrows. Monty doesn’t say anything to that, just focuses his attention on his food. Raven turns her attention to Clarke. “Me and the other upperclassmen have a bet going on whether Miller knows about Monty’s undying love for him, if you’re interested,”

“I assume Miller’s not included in this bet,”

“Can’t bet on things you’re involved in,” Luna pipes up. “Which makes you eligible to bet on nearly all of them.”

“Nearly all? What are you guys betting for me in?”   
Raven winks. “Can’t disclose that. Octavia told you about the bet we have going about the coach, right?”

Clarke nods.

“There’s also a bet going about Bellamy’s date to the banquet,” Monty adds. “Or, a few bets. If he’ll bring anyone, who he’ll bring if he does, etcetera.”

“Whether he’ll end up going home with someone else’s date again,” Luna pipes up.

“Dude’s a bit of a ladykiller,” Raven says with a roll of the eyes. “But seriously! You’re going to come to the banquet, right?”

Clarke shrugs. “I guess I’ll have nothing better to do.”

This receives cheers from the table.

* * *

Clarke catches a ride to the Court with her roommates, hoping that being around her teammates will quell the fierce nerves in her stomach. If she were a less steady person, her hands would be shaking as she keys the number to let them into the Court. It’s busier than it’s ever been, with spectators already arriving, creating a buzz around college Exy like she’s never seen. 

In the changing room, the girls each pull on their gear in separate cubicles, so Clarke doesn’t see the others in their full game uniform until she, too, steps out, armour and jersey fitted perfectly. 

The room is entirely orange - bar their helmets, Luna, Raven and Octavia are fully decked out in their gear. Something wells up inside of Clarke to be part of that, knowing that when she steps onto the court in the second half that she’ll be playing, finally, as part of a Class I team. 

“You good, Clarke?” Raven asks, spotting something off. 

“Uh, yeah,” she says. “Two seconds.”

She steps outside the girls’ locker room for a minute. She leans against the wall outside for moment, and she can hear the bustling of the crowd getting settled not too far away. 

“Nervous?”

She turns in shock to see Miller standing a little further down the corridor, leaning against the wall. His goalkeeper’s uniform is bulkier than Clarke’s, but he’s the same offensive shade of orange.

“Is it obvious?”

He laughs, low. Miller is one of the players on the team with whom Clarke’s had the least amount of interaction, but he’s clearly a good goalkeeper and Bellamy trusts him. 

“It’s not you so much as it is an obvious situation,” he says. At the raise of her eyebrow, he continues. “It’s your first game. Of course you’re nervous,”

She ducks her head on a smile. “It’s a pretty big deal,”

“It is.” Miller nids, but looks at her with an open expression, like he’s waiting for her to continue. 

“I guess I’m just worried I’m not good enough. I’m not fast like the backliners and strikers, and I don’t have the strength you and Raven do. I’m the offensive dealer, but am I even a good one?”

Miller pauses for a second, then says, “Bellamy says you’re one of the best offensive dealers in collegiate Exy.”

“What - no. When did he say that?”

Miller lifts a hand in mock surrender. “Fight with Murphy at the beginning of the summer. Numbnuts said you weren’t good enough for the team, some of his usual anti-prep school shit. Bellamy had your back.”

Clarke just blinks at him. “Bellamy hates me.”

“Do you honestly think if Bellamy hated you you’d still be on the team?” Miller asks, and Clarke is honestly too dumbfounded to answer. Before she can really think about it, though, they hear Kane’s whistle, signalling time to head to the court. Clarke lifts a hand in thanks to Miller and heads to the changing room to grab her helmet and racquet.

* * *

The second they file into the inner court, they’re met by the chorus from the school band and cheers from the students. Clarke has to brace herself against the wall as the stamping of feet and the sounds of shouts and shrieks fill her chest. Her blood is pumping through her veins, and she’s not even on court yet. She played in the stadium in Washington, sure, but it was nothing like this. The competition didn’t feel as real, and it was like the audience there had known it too. In Washington, Exy games were what you did to pass the time on a Friday night, but in Ark U, they were practically the highlight of the week.

Her excitement must be palpable, because Raven knocks her shoulder against hers. “It’s awesome, right?”

Clarke can only nod in agreement.

“Alright, you delinquents,” Kane says, and the murmur of conversation amongst the Foxes quietens. “Simple relay shots for warm-ups, Miller and Raven twice through each. You know the rest. Now grab your helmets and get out on the court.”

They do as they’re told, and line up at the door in order of their playing positions, with Bellamy in front as captain. They wait for another blow of the whistle before filing onto the court. Even through her helmet, Clarke nearly goes deaf from the cheers of the crowd as each player’s name is called. Octavia, walking in front of her, shoots her a grin over her shoulder once their names are called, and she almost smiles.

Bellamy leads them through a series of warm ups, keeping to the home end of the court to leave space for the Eligius Jackals when they come to the court. When the Jackals do come on, a sea of black-and-tan, they’re met with boos from the home crowd, peppered with cheers from any Eligius students who made the journey. They barely look like they notice, and from the harsh sets of their jaws, it appears that Raven’s statement about them being “Mean sons of bitches” wasn’t wrong. When the warm-ups are finished, Bellamy meets the Jackals’ captain at the half-court line, flanked by the referees. The two shake hands, though the Jackals’ captain doesn’t exactly seem happy about it. Then comes the coin toss for first serve, which the referees signal to be in the Jackals’ favour. At that, Bellamy leads his team back to the inner court, where Clarke, Monty, and Octavia are to wait as subs, while Raven waits for the second half. 

The starting line up are announced again, and they lift their racquets almost in salute as they file into their starting positions, all on the home end of the court. 

“You’ve got this!” Octavia calls after them, but her words are lost almost immediately in the return of the band’s encouraging chorus and the students whooping and cheering. Once both teams have taken up their positions, the referees slam and lock the doors onto the court, meaning the crowd and the subs won’t be able to hear everything the players yell to each other. Which, judging by the middle finger Murphy’s nearest Eligius player is giving him, could be pretty interesting.  

Overhead, the clock is counting down to the game’s beginning, and Clarke can barely breathe as she watches the team waiting. They all stand like coiled springs, ready to fire the second they can. The clock counts to zero, and the Jackals’ dealer flicks the ball into the air, and the sound of her hitting it down the court is what breaks the Foxes’ spell. They sprint and scrabble, racing to find their proper positions and their marks. The game is rough from the second it starts, with bodies crashing together and against the plexiglass walls moments from the starting buzzer. As is always the case in the first few minutes of any game, it’s a hectic scrabble for dominance. Once the Foxes settle into a rhythm, and figure out how the Jackals’ have changed since the year before, it’ll be more organised, but as it is, the ball is flying from team to team, with sticks clacking and opposing teams jostling and shoving. 

Clarke lets out a harsh breath as Luna gets checked into the wall when trying to pass the ball to Bellamy, who has been dancing around the Eligius backliners trying to get a decent shot at goal. On their end of the court, Jasper and Lincoln are pushing their strikers further up from the goal, but hesitating every now and again, not wanting to leave too much space in case the strikers shake them lose. God knows the disasters that could happen if they had a clear run at Miller’s goal like that. 

The sound of the ball hitting against the wall echoes through the inner court, and Clarke looks over just in time to see Murphy catching it mid-air. It’s barely in his racquet for a few seconds before he passes to Bellamy, which is lucky, because he’s quickly checked against the wall. Checking is only allowed if the player is actually in position of the ball, but due to the speed of the game, some players might not slow down in time, leaving loopholes for instances like this. Unfortunately, in his rush, Murphy didn’t properly pass the ball, leaving Bellamy in a race with his mark for the ball.

“Come on, Bell,” Octavia whispers from beside Clarke.

Bellamy’s mark is faster, and catches the ball before he has the chance, and heaves it down the court. Clarke flinches as the ball lands just inches outside the goal. One of the Jackals’ strikers catches it on the rebound, and flings it at the goal almost immediately. In almost lightning time, though, Miller meets the ball and beats it down the court. Monty lets out a loud whoop, and Clarke grins.

“Sure you’re the best goalkeeper?” she nudges Raven, who rolls her eyes.

Clarke returns her attention to the court. Luna intercepts the ball, but nearly the second she catches it she’s bowled over by the Jackal’s dealer. She steals the ball from Luna and makes another run at the goal. Luna starts to run after her but slows. Clarke doesn’t understand at first, but then sees Jasper running at the dealer. He can’t stop her from passing to the strikers, but thanks to the same loophole Murphy was victim of, he can send her sprawling, preventing a relay shot to get the ball in goal.

“Harsh,” Octavia winces. 

“No ladies-first bullshit in Exy, Little Blake,” Raven says, and her smile is wolfish. Clarke can’t help but wonder if she’d rather be in a more contact-heavy position than in goal. 

The Jackals’ dealer finds her feet, and amidst all this drama, Lincoln has been able to shake his mark and intercept the ball the dealer had originally passed to the strikers. Without looking over his shoulder, he fires the ball back to Miller. Almost without looking, Miller clears the ball out of home court. Clarke grins at the sound that reverberates through the walls as the ball hits off the ceiling. 

From the sidelines, and not just on the fringes of practice, Clarke can finally see the magic of the Foxes when they play as a team. Individually, they’re all obviously talented, but when they come together, it’s like watching an orchestra playing a perfect symphony. It’s appeared in snatches throughout the game, but never at practice, and it’s only when she sees Miller sneering at the Eligius strikers that it clicks into place for her. The Foxes weren’t all born team players, they came from rough backgrounds, many of which required them to rely on themselves, but what united them on the Court wasn’t the traditional sense of teamwork - even if that was what their captain swore and lived by. No, she thinks, as she watches Lincoln jostling with his mark. The Foxes are united by a burning hatred of the other team. Maybe it was because the Jackals were so easily to despise, but the Foxes really rallied together, as if trying to win out of spite. Looking at them like this, it was almost surprising they hadn’t done better in previous years. 

Almost the second she thinks that, of course, she has to watch as the Foxes lose their first point. Luna hadn’t been kidding about the Jackals’ violence - one of them nearly slams Jasper against the wall of the court to make room for the other striker to sprint by. It’s excruciating to watch as Miller’s racquet narrowly misses blocking the ball from hitting the goal. Clarke winces as the sound of the buzzer filling the air and the sight of the goal lighting up red.

“Fuck,” Octavia breathes.

“Come on Foxes!” Raven calls out, and Clarke joins in. She doesn’t know if the team can hear her, but she needs to give them her support anyway. Monty is banging on the plexiglass like he’s trying to break through. 

The Foxes’ agitation is clear just in the tension in their shoulders as they all make their way back to their starting positions. It nearly passes all peacefully, with them ready to rally and continue, until Bellamy’s backliner shoves him as he passes him. Octavia lets out a low curse as Bellamy retaliates, swinging his fist at the backliner.

“He’s captain,” Clarke hears herself saying. “Should he be getting into fights like this?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Raven asks, a question Clarke doesn’t have the frame of mind to process. To make matters worse, as if Bellamy getting into a fight is an excuse for him to do it, Murphy practically throws himself at his own backliner, who responds by whaling on Murphy too. Bellamy pulls back from his own fight in time to see Murphy swinging at his backliner, and holds his hand out as if telling Murphy to stop. This leaves him vulnerable to another shove from his mark, which pushes him into Murphy’s backliner. He reels, and just as he’s getting his footing, Murphy swings at him. 

“ _ Murphy! _ ” Kane shouts, anger a living thing in his voice. Luckily, before Bellamy can do anything but shove Murphy away, Luna runs between them. She’s about the same height as both strikers, and from what Clarke’s seen at practice, just as strong, so she has no problem shoving them away from each other. Bellamy gestures with his racquet, and the three of them make to go back to their starting positions.

Kane, however, has a different idea. Clarke doesn’t notice him speaking with a referee, but the second Murphy steps away from Bellamy, he grunts Octavia’s name.

“I’m swapping you for Murphy,” he says. 

“Hell yeah, Little Blake,” Raven says, clapping Octavia in the shoulder as she stands up.

“Give them hell,” Monty tells her.

Octavia doesn’t answer, just flashes them a wicked smile, and jogs out to the striker liner when the referee opens the door. Murphy’s pissed-off-ness radiates off him as he drops onto the bench next to Raven, seemingly oblivious to the stream of expletives coming from Kane. 

On the court, Luna is preparing for serve. Her movements are all grace when she flicks the ball in the air, but the second she hits the ball towards the striker, she’s brute athleticism again - not that anything Luna does could really be considered brutish. As the ball flies towards him, Bellamy checks his mark out of the way almost instantly, swiping the ball out of the air and making a run on goal almost in the same movement. Clarke watches with baited breath as he sidesteps the Jackals’ backliner and fires at the goal. Raven and Monty have pulled her into a celebratory hug almost before she’s realised what’s happened. 

“Come on, Foxes!” Kane cheers. A buzzer sounds overhead, and the Jackals’ goal is lit up red. She can’t see it, but she can imagine Bellamy’s smile is wide. 

The joy doesn’t last long, of course, and within seconds Bellamy and his mark are brawling. Clarke barely blinked, but she can’t tell who swung first. It takes Lincoln and Luna intervening to pull them off each other. Kane swears.

“Man, this is gonna be a tough game,” Monty sighs. 

The game continues at that rough pace. To try maintain the defense line, Kane swaps Monty for Lincoln, and Clarke gets to witness Monty and Jasper’s weird telepathy in action in an actual game. The spectating doesn’t last for long, though. 

“Griffin,” Kane says, and her stomach is steel. “It’s time.”

By the time Clarke has to swap with Luna, the Foxes are angry and pissed. They’re two-three down, and the Jackals seem to be more open to bending the rules the more time passes. It’s the Jackals’ deal, so she stands a few feet in front of the striker line, in ready position. 

The Jackals’ have swapped dealers too, so the girl who Jasper had knocked into the plexiglass has been swapped for a guy who stands a few inches over Clarke but with enough anger to seem taller. She really wants to beat him. He flicks the ball in the air and hits it down towards his strikers, and she’s already running. A Jackals striker gets the ball, but Octavia checks it out of his racquet seconds later, letting Clarke sweep it out of the air. She starts running, and sees Bellamy, open, a few feet away. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to, fires it at him, and he’s already moving. She doesn’t know where Octavia comes from, but he passes to her like he already knew where she was, and the younger Blake sends the ball careening into the top corner of the goal. 

The overhead buzzer goes off, and Clarke grins to herself as she jogs back to half-court. The Blakes are engaged in a complicated handshake/hug embrace, and the crowds cheers are loud enough that Clarke can hear them through the helmet and the glass. In that moment, nothing exists but Exy. Her life is only these plexiglass walls, her teammates, the racquet in her hand and the helmet on her head. The only sounds she knows are those cheers and her pulse racing. The only colour she’s ever seen is orange. She laughs with exhilaration.

This buoyant joy, of course, doesn’t last. One of the Jackals players fouls Monty, and after the foul shot it’s Clarke’s serve. She breathes deeply as she goes to flick the ball into the air. She thinks of all the hours spent practicing with Bellamy, and she fires it over her shoulder without properly looking. When she completes the turn, she’s jarred to see the Jackals backliner intercept the shot, a frustrating grin on his face. The ball goes soaring towards a Jackals striker, and despite Clarke, the backliners and Raven’s attempts, the ball lands in goal. Clarke swears. She glances over at Bellamy, but he’s too far away for her to read his expression through his helmet. 

Not long after that the buzzer for halftime rings through the court, with a score of three-four, Foxes’ disadvantage. Clarke follows her teammates off the court and to the foyer. 

“Griffin,” Bellamy grunts from behind her. She winces, and turns to face him. He doesn’t say anything until the rest of their team has filed past them and towards to reception area to talk with Kane. “What was that back there?”

“I messed up,” she says, forcing herself to look him in the eye. “I was trying to use what we used in drills and - ”

“This isn’t Class II, princess. Don’t try. Do.”

She bristles at the nickname. “You think I don’t know that? I just messed up. I’ll do better in the second half.”

He shakes his head slightly. “You better.”   
They start the second half angry. Clarke’s on the bench again, watching with Raven, Bellamy and Jasper. 

“Let’s go Foxes!” Bellamy yells, like he can penetrate the plexiglass wall. Clarke’s hands are balled in fists as she watches the game in front of her. She nearly loses her life holding her breath as Murphy narrowly avoids a bodycheck and slams a ball into the goal in the first of the second half. Bellamy, in all his celebration, seems to forget how pissed he is at her, and how little he likes her in general, because he wraps an arm around her and pulls her into a celebratory hug just like he does Raven on his other side.

When Kane swaps her for Luna, the Foxes are down six-seven. She glances at Lincoln and Jasper on the backline. Lincoln, despite all his strength, looks tired, his shoulders heavy from jostling with his mark for the entire half. Jasper, at least, looks a little more energised, all wirey energy, practically dancing around his mark. In goal, Raven stands like the last port in a storm. 

It’s the Jackals’ serve, so she stands in position, waiting. The ball goes flying towards the Jackals striker nearest to Clarke, and when he catches it, Clarke tackles him straight away, clacking sticks until he loses the ball. In a snap decision, she fires the ball to Jasper, who passes to Murphy. Clarke spots his mark racing for him, and shakes her own mark to get between the backliner and Murphy. His path clear, Murphy can now relay the ball to Bellamy, and when he gets the ball back, he doesn’t miss the shot on goal.

The buzzer is joined by a chorus of cheers from the stands. Bellamy whoops and claps Murphy on the shoulder, all previous animosity forgotten. Murphy catches Clarke’s eye and lifts his racquet, a silent salute. 

As they get into starting positions, Kane swaps Murphy for Octavia and Lincoln for Monty. Both underclassmen cheer Clarke as they come on, and she can’t fight back her smile.

The next serve is the Foxes’, but unfortunately one of the Jackals’ strikers swipes it out of mid-air almost immediately. But then something beautiful happens.

Monty all but trips his sharklike mark, forcing her to fumble her racquet and for the ball to fall to the ground. Before Clarke can run to intercept, Jasper has swiped the ball out of the air. She starts running before her mark gets a chance to clock what’s happening, and when Jasper fires the ball at her, she catches it with no problem. She can hear the opposing dealer pounding after her, but her focus is on Bellamy, where he’s jostling with his backliner mark. They make eye-contact, and he yells for her to pass to him. 

She’s about to fire the ball in his direction when she spots one of the Jackals’ backliners in her way, practically poised to knock her off her feet. She veers to the side to avoid him, sprinting to get close enough that his mark can’t catch it. 

“Blake!” she shouts, throwing the ball with all the power left in her arms. She doesn’t have enough time to slow down before she collides with the plexiglass wall, and just as she does, the backliner she had been avoiding hurtles into her side, crushing her against the wall. The pain is sudden, a combination of the impact on both her shoulders and a tightness in her chest. The backliner pushes away from the wall and Clarke falls to her knees instantaneously. 

But she can’t even be mad, because the buzzer announcing a goal is echoing off the walls. Someone jogs over to her, and she finds herself grinning up at Bellamy, He holds out a hand to help her up. She graciously accepts.

“Nice assist,” he says as he pulls her up, not even trying to hide his smile.

“Nice goal,” she responds. “Let’s keep this lead.”

He just shakes his head. “Get into position.”

The last few minutes of the game are brutal, with the Jackals fighting tooth and nail to try and bring the score back to a draw. Clarke can’t hear the subs through the wall, but she can feel Miller, Lincoln and Murphy’s attention on the game and their support. Even Murphy’s. 

Octavia lets out an almighty shriek when the buzzer signalling the end of the game goes off, and once she pulls her helmet off, Clarke is roped into celebrations by the younger Blake in seconds. They’re joined by Monty and Jasper, who are chanting ecstatic “We did it!”s and “Fuck Eligius”s. Clarke breaks away from the cheering group just as Bellamy approaches, and instead jogs to meet Raven coming from the goal.

“We fucking did it,” Raven says as Clarke pulls her into a hug. “The first game of the season!”

“We fucking did,” Clarke grins. She turns back to the rest of the team when Raven releases her, and she isn’t surprised to see the subs have come onto the court. Bellamy has Miller wrapped in a complicated bro-hug, but he makes eye contact with Clarke once he pulls away. 

His smile is brilliant and warm as he calls to her, “Welcome to the team.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you have any questions about exy, the court or how it works, you can either consult the brilliant foxhole court wikia, or you can ask me here or on tumblr (@neiljostensmh).
> 
> i hope you all have a lovely holiday!


End file.
